But that can't be the case. Close your left eye. You can still see much of your left visual field, and you'd certainly smell any food placed under your nose. And what dog is one to walk away without finishing their food?

In fact, Barley is displaying signs of hemispatial neglect, a strange condition in which brain damage, despite normal vision, results in complete neglect of the left side of one's world. Barley had, in fact, suffered a stroke.



Hemispatial neglect most commonly occurs after injury to the right parietal lobe like, in Barley's case, stroke.

It is not as common with left parietal lobe damage—it is thought that the right hemisphere of the brain is generally more specialized for spatial memory, while the left side is better tuned for language.

The left side of a person's world is ignored, then—damage to the right side of the brain reduces the amount of neural activity that crosses over the left via the large fiber tract connecting the two halves, called the corpus collosum (right).

A number of strange symptoms can arise in a person suffering from hemispatia . . . More