The line bisection task in the acute stage of hemianopia and neglect

The line bisection task is a common clinical bedside tool for the assessment of spatial neglect and homonymous hemianopia (HH). While neglect patients show an ipsilesional deviation, hemianopic patients are usually known to displace their midline contralesionally towards the scotoma. Evidence for the “hemianopic line bisection error (LBE)“ came from hemianopic patients in a chronic stage of brain damage (mostly occipital stroke). As it seems to represent a compensatory shift of attention the LBE may be absent in the acute stage. If so, is the line bisection task a reliable bedside tool to distinguish hemianopia…