Perception of global gestalt by temporal integration in simultanagnosia

The coherent processing of our environment requires the integration of local elements into a global gestalt. Patients with bilateral parieto-occipital brain damage show intact processing of individual objects, while their simultaneous perception of multiple objects at the same time is disturbed. This deficit is termed simultanagnosia and has been discussed in the context of restricted visual working memory and impaired visuo-spatial attention. Recent observations indicated that the perception of global gestalt can be modulated by the spatial distance between individual objects in patients with simultanagnosia an…