No reversal of the Oppel-Kundt illusion with short stimuli: confutation of the space anisometry interpretation of neglect and 'cross-over' in line bisection

Right-brain damaged patients suffering neglect for the left side of space bisect long horizontal lines to the right of the true centre. This phenomenon is traditionally explained by pathological reduction of the attentional salience of the contralesional side of the line and enhancement of the attentional salience of its ipsilesional side due to brain damage (Pouget and Driver, 2000; Bartolomeo and Chokron, 2002). At variance with this largely accepted explanation, Bisiach and co-workers (Bisiach et al., 1994; Bisiach, 1997; Bisiach et al., 2002) conjectured that in neglect patients the representation of horizontal space is continuously and progressively 'relaxed'toward the left and 'compressed'toward the right, in a logarithmic manner. By consequence the left side of a symmetrical horizontal line immersed in this 'anisometrical'representational gradient will be perceived as being shorter than its physically equivalent right side ...