[Psych3120] The man and the hat (visual agnosia)

[Kristin Ward]

Here's a little bit about visual agnosia for those who haven't yet had Brain and Behavior.

Agnosia is a failure of recognition that is not attributable to sensory, verbal or intellectual impairment.  This impairment is usually limited to one sensory system.

In visual agnosia is agnosia for visual stimuli.  Basically, a visual agnosic will see the visual stimuli but fail to recognize it.  For example, a patient might see a chair and be able to navigate around it, etc. but wouldn't be able to tell that it is a chair.  This impairment can even be limited to a specific visual system.  For example, movement agnosia is the inability to recognize movement and color agnosia is the inability to recognize color.

Visual agnosia results from damage to the secondary visual cortex.  The specific area of damage determines which particular aspect of visual input is impaired.

For more information see "Brain and Behavior" Chaoter 8, by Pinel.

Kristin

 That story of "the man which mistook his wife for a hat" is good
> reading.  If I recall from my Brain and Behavior class (psych 3711,
> highly suggested to all interested in this type of stuff)  It is usually
> due to damage in secondary visual cortex regions of the brain.  I think
> it is called visual agnosia or something like that.
> 
> 
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