Case report of a visual integrative agnosia

Abstract

We report the case of a patient with a major defect in visual object recognition after vascular damage in posterior regions of both cerebral hemispheres. We conclude that our subject suffered from integrative agnosia, according to the terminology recently proposed by Humphreys and Riddoch (1987). However, there were several features by which our subject differed from the previous cases of integrative agnosia: he displayed analogous difficulties in tactile modality, he tended to recognise objects when they were actually used by the examiner, and he seemed to have access to semantic knowledge of objects from a partial analysis with no access to the structural knowledge. The implications of the case for current accounts of agnosia and visual object recognition are discussed.