ABSTRACT
Many patients who survive brain damage are left with a variety of cognitive difficulties which can adversely affect their recovery and treatment. The term “cognitive” is used here to describe a wide range of mental abilities including perception, reasoning, memory, and language. Cognitive impairments are often missed or poorly described in clinical practice, yet they often influence the patient’s recovery and may explain the patient’s failure to respond adequately to rehabilitation. As many types of everyday cognitive activities involve directing attention to selective spatial features of our environment, it is not surprising that visuospatial disorders after brain damage are sometimes difficult to identify or characterise.
