Imaginal (representational) neglect-typically revealed by contralesional omissions when patients describe familiar places from long-term memory-provides a test case for theories of mental scene construction. Unlike propositional recall of place-related facts, imaginal tasks require that semantic knowledge be "spatialized" into a viewpoint-dependent scene that can be actively sampled....
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
No actionable change for audiologists; this is a cognitive neuroscience study on spatial mental imagery and is not directly relevant to audiology practice.
Understanding how the brain constructs mental scenes sheds light on neglect syndromes, but has no near-term bearing on audiology or hearing rehabilitation.
- 01Imaginal neglect involves omitting one side of a mentally recalled scene, mirroring perceptual neglect.
- 02Study tests competing theories of mental scene construction using patients with brain lesions.
- 03Published in Cortex (2026), a peer-reviewed cognitive neuroscience journal.
- 04Findings inform neuroscience of spatial representation, not clinical audiology.
- PMID
- 42966033
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.cortex.2026.10.008.
- Journal
- Cortex
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 4
- Population
- Patients with brain lesions exhibiting imaginal (representational) neglect
- Intervention
- Analysis of contralesional omissions during mental recall of familiar places
Primary outcomes
Characterisation of contralesional omissions in mental scene recall; Evaluation of theories of mental scene construction