Bodamer's (1947) paper on prosopagnosia

Abstract

If one takes out what is common to our cases, prosopagnosia is a case of a disorder in the recognition of faces while the perception of them is retained. If the disorder is serious it includes not only human and animal faces but, in an extended sense, every object with an expression and widens out to comprehensive expression agnosia. If this is present, it leads back to a disorder in the sufferer's active capacity for expression. In expression agnosia, as the more serious form, the prosopagnosia is included. In both our cases of prosopagnosia there was also slight object agnosia, stronger simultaneous agnosia, a more or less distinct alexia, in case 2 there was colour agnosia in the form of green-blue disturbance, in case 1 at first there was a complete blindness for colours, out of which colour agnosia developed during the restitution. While the memory (including visual optical memory) for those agnosic disorders was not impaired, it failed completely in prosopagnosia, a difference which seems significant for the nature of prosopagnosia and to which we will return. While unrecognised things in the areas of object, simultaneous and colour agnosia are noted, prosopagnosia precludes the formation of a visual impression capable of being noted and remembered, but the capacity for inner reproduction of previously seen faces is retained and individual parts and forms of faces are recognised. In case 2 there was also a whole series of mental/ brain-pathological failures of which we note above all the body schema disorder, the disorder of right-left orientation, apraxia and touch agnosia, constructive apraxia, disorder in spatial orientation and a slight disorder in gaining an overview.