Prosopagnosia

Revision as of 23:27, 24 April 2008 by Cwhitehead (Talk | contribs)

Agnosia disorders include various cognitive disorders that deal with "not knowing impariments

such as auditory agnosia which is the inability to recognize sounds or visual object agnosia

which is the inability to recognize familar objects that can be seen. Visual object agnosia

is similar to prosopagnosia and most patients with visual object agnosia also have

prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize faces on sight and is usually

associated with bilateral occipital damage. A patient named Michael was diagnosed with

prosopagnosia and a few other agnosia disorders. Michael is incapable of recognizing any faces

desipte the familiarity and he has not been able to for 17 years. He never recognizes his mother

until she speaks and when asked to identify himself in family photos he is incapable of doing

so. He does have the ability to recollect faces if asked to describe someone famous or a family

member yet when presented with a picture of that person he still is not able to recognize their

face or to identify the person by picture.