Anosognosia research
Anosognosia is a disorder of denial of deficit (ie lack of awareness) after brain lesion. In the patient populations that I am most interested in, the lesion site involves the convexity surface of the right hemisphere - and denial is typically of the paralysis of the left limbs that accompany such lesions. This is also the lesion site which produces hemi-spatial neglect, and I have a some publications on that topic as well. My research has been primarily in demonstrating the range of emotional experience in anosognosia, and any possible role for emotion in anosognosia. This includes the suggestion that the lack of awareness might result from an inability to tolerate the powerful emotional consequences that would follow from the patient becoming aware that they are paralysed - ie anosognosia as a defence.
Negative emotions in anosognosia
- Turnbull, O.H., Owen, V. & Evans, C.E.Y. (2005). Negative emotions in anosognosia. Cortex, 41: 67-75.(download)
Implicit awareness of deficit
- Turnbull, O.H., Jones, K. & Reed-Screen, J. (2002). Implicit awareness of deficit in anosognosia: An emotion-based account of denial of deficit. Neuropsychoanalysis, 4: 69-86. (download)
A review of Ramachandran's anosognosia findings
- Turnbull, O.H. (1997). Neglect: Mirror mirror, on the wall - is the left side there at all? Current Biology, 7: 709-711.
Pseudoneglect (neglect in the neurologically-normal)
- McLeod, M.S. & Turnbull, O.H. (1999). An investigation of motor and perceptual pseudoneglect. Neuropsychologia, 37: 707-713.(download)
Attention and Emotion in Anosognosia
- Nadone, I.B., Ward, R., Fotopoulou, A. & Turnbull, O.H. (2007). Attention and emotion in anosognosia: Evidence of implicit awareness and repression. Neurocase, 13: 438-445.(download)