(Asked by Patrick Cunningham of Annandale, New South Wales, Australia)

    Spatial Neglect Syndrome, also known as Unilateral Spatial Neglect, is a neurological condition that results most often from stroke.  There is damage to one brain hemisphere which erases or blocks awareness of one side of all that we perceive (left or right).  There is no problem perceiving on the other side.  For example, when people with right Spatial Neglect Syndrome look at a clock face, they would only see the numbers 6 through 12.  Spatial Neglect Syndrome mostly effects vision, but it can also cause hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching problems.  It can be reversible with time and therapy.  Dr. Ian Robertson at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland has treated Spatial Neglect Syndrome patients with special “prism” glasses that restore the entire visual field.  The patient is encouraged to scan the field from left to right in order to help “rewire” the brain.  Patients are also encouraged to verbally “command” their brain and body to perceive that which is in the entire visual field.  Spatial Neglect Syndrome was defined in 1979 by Drs. K.M. Heilman and E. Valenstein of the University of Florida School of Medicine in their article in the ANNALS OF NEUROLOGY.  According to Drs. S. Chokron, P. Bartolomeo, and E. Sieroff of the Laboratory for Psychology and NeuroCognition in Paris in their article in the REVUE NEUROLOGIQUE since 1979, there has been a “profusion of clinical descriptions” of Spatial Neglect Syndrome.   

THE ODD GRAB BAG

    In the Northern Hemisphere, people born in January and February are at the statistically significant greatest risk of developing brain cancer and people born in July and August are at the statistically significant least risk of developing brain cancer.  

    Deaths from brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s Parkinson’s and motor neuron disease have tripled in the last twenty years.  Some researchers believe that chemical pollution is to blame.

    According to Korean researchers, leukemia rates are 70 per cent higher among people living near AM radio towers. 

    According to French researchers, children living near petrol (gas) stations are more likely to develop leukemia.

    It is believed by some that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is an immune system disorder resulting from stress.

    Spanish researchers have concluded that a mother’s obesity can cause birth defects.

    U.S. researchers have found that happy married women have healthier hearts than unhappy unmarried women.

    In the U.S., three times as many females under the age of 19 get breast implants than they did in 2002.

    In the U.S. state of Mississippi, literacy is so low that 60 per cent of those taking the test for a driver’s license fail the written part of the examination.  This exam is set at the reading level of a 10-year-old.   

    The U.S. ranks first in the number of deaths of children left in locked cars.

    Each year in the U.S., 80 billion dollars is lost through the copper, gold, silver, palladium, and platinum thrown away when we discard retired cell phones.

This Tropic of Cancer is now misnamed.  In the June 2008 summer solstice, the Sun actually appears in the constellation Taurus due to shifting of the Earth’s axis.

*Stephen Juan, Ph.D. is an anthropologist and the Ashley Montagu Fellow for Science Understanding at the University of Sydney in Australia.  Email questions to him at s.juan@edfac.usyd.edu.au He attended Napa High School as a student and some of his family still reside in Napa.