Safe return to driving following severe acquired brain injury: role of a short neuropsychological assessment.

Background: Driving is a complex ability requiring a broad range of motor, cognitive-behavioral and visual skills that may be impaired after severe acquired brain injury (sABI). Resumption of driving is perceived as a major need by patients, being closely linked to personal autonomy, work and social activities.

Aim: The objective of this study was to identify a short battery of neuropsychological tests with predictive value with regard to safe return to driving after sABI.

The two sides of spatial representation in neglect patients: the same spatial distortion for different patterns of performance.

Patients with neglect show disorders in horizontal space perception. It has been argued that these disorders may depend on a distortion of space that takes the form of a left-right relaxation of the representational medium that becomes progressively "relaxed" toward the contralesional space and progressively "compressed" toward the ipsilesional space (the space anisometry hypothesis). In the present paper we tested this hypothesis by using the Oppel-Kundt illusion that consists of the perception of a filled space as larger than an empty space of the same size.