Construction and psychometric properties of a novel test for body representational neglect (Vest Test).

PURPOSE: Multimodal spatial neglect manifests itself also in nonvisual modalities such as audition, touch and body representation. Yet, quantitative tests for the diagnosis of nonvisual neglect are still quite rare. The purpose of the present paper was to develop and evaluate a novel, simple and sensitive test for the assessment of body representational neglect (BRN) in patients with left or right cerebral hemispheric lesions. METHODS: The vest test covers the front part of the trunk. The blindfolded subject wears the vest and is instructed to pick up all objects from the 24 pockets of the vest (12 on each side) as quickly as possible using the ipsilesional, nonparetic hand. Two samples of healthy control subjects (each N=25) using either their left or their right hand performed the test in identical way to obtain normative data for patients searching with their left hand (i.e. left hemisphere stroke patients) versus their right hand (i.e. right hemisphere stroke patients). The test can be performed within 5~minutes, even with aphasic or apractic stroke patients. RESULTS: Psychometric evaluations in a sample of 50 patients with unilateral stroke (25 leftsided, 25 rightsided) show high objectivity, high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha=0.96), good retest-reliability (0.79 after 1 week in neglect patients) and good validity as compared with two other measures of BRN or multimodal neglect. Patient examples show that BRN as assessed with the vest test allows the detection of qualitatively and quantitatively different patterns of BRN, and shows double dissociations from visual neglect and from apraxia in left hemisphere stroke patients. Details of the test including instructions and cut-off values are given for users in the appendix of this article. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, the vest test is a sensitive, quick and reliable test for BRN which complements the assessment of visuo- and audiospatial neglect and allows to measure recovery (spontaneous or treatment-induced) in patients with BRN. Furthermore, it can help to improve our knowledge about the multisensory coding of our body and the surrounding space in the human brain.

The 387 kb linear plasmid pPZG101 of Streptomyces rimosus and its interactions with the chromosome.

The linear plasmid pPZG101 of Streptomyces rimosus R6 was restriction mapped with the enzymes AseI, BfrI, DraI and XbaI. It is 387 kb in size and the ends are inverted repeats of at least 95 kb in length. Twenty spontaneous morphological variants and seventeen auxotrophic mutants were screened for changes in the plasmid. Two strains were found that had lost all plasmid sequences. Four strains had integrated parts of the plasmid into the chromosome. Restriction analysis suggested that at least three of the integrated strains had retained free plasmid ends. If it is assumed that the chromosome of S. rimosus R6 is linear, this might be explained by replacement of one or both chromosome ends by a plasmid end. One strain, which overproduced oxytetracycline, carried an enlarged linear plasmid of 1 Mb in size that had acquired chromosomal sequences from the oxytetracycline biosynthesis cluster.