Knowledge acquisition in the development of an expert system for the management of perceptual disorder in stroke

About 25% of patients who fail to recover fully from stroke have a perceptual disorder of some kind [1]. The patient with a perceptual disorder may ignore his surroundings on the affected side of his body; he may even deny ownership of his weak limbs. The major perceptual disorders in stroke are: neglect (also called unilateral visual neglect), disordered spatial orientation, and denial. Any combination of these abnormalities can occur, and none can be reliably diagnosed on the basis of any single test.