WHAT,

WHERE,
& HOW SYSTEMS
AGNOSIAS!
What, Where, & How Systems
 Agnosia
• Agnosia is the inability to process sensory
information. Often there is a loss of ability
to recognize objects, persons, sounds,
shapes, or smells while the specific sense
is not defective nor is there any significant
memory loss.
 Cause
• Agnosia is usually caused by lesions on
the parietal and temporal lobes of the
brain. These lobes store semantic
information and language. Strokes, head
traumas, or encephalitis can cause
lesions. Other conditions that damage or
impair the brain can also cause agnosia
 Visual Agnosia
• It is not due to a deficit in vision
(acuity, visual field, and scanning),
language,memory, or low intellect. While
cortical blindness results from lesions to
primaryvisual cortex, visual agnosia is
often due to damage to more anterior
cortex such as the posterior occipital
and/or temporal lobe(s) in the brain.
 Visual Object Agnosia
• Apperceptive( vision)

• Associative(touch)
 Visual Object Agnosia

Apperceptive agnosia is failure in

recognition that is due to a failure of
perception. In
contrast, associative(touch)agnosia is a
type of agnosia where perception occurs
but recognition still does not occur.
 Visual Object Agnosia
Associative visual agnosia is a form of
visual agnosia. It is an impairment in
recognition or assigning meaning to a
stimulus that is accurately perceived and not
associated with a generalized deficit in
intelligence, memory, language or attention
Apperceptive Associative
Associative Agnosia
 Apperceptive Agnosia
• Intact vision:
– Acuity, brightness discrimination, color vision, & other
elementary visual capabilities
– Sometimes preserved shape from motion
• Deficits:
– Abnormal shape perception (pictures, letters, simple
shapes)
– Grouping process deficit (that operates over an array
of local features representing contour, color, depth,
etc.)
 Apperceptive Agnosia
• Apperceptive Agnosia, impaired triangle
recognition
• Apperceptive Agnosia, impaired object
recognition
• Object Agnosia 1: Impaired Visual identification
(subject given name & array of objects), can’t see
objects
• Object Agnosia 2: Impaired Visual but not tactile
identification (naming)
• Object Agnosia 3: Intact visual movement
identification
 Associative Agnosia
Associative Agnosia
• Cannot recognize objects by sight alone
• Intact general knowledge of objects
• Can recognize objects by touch or definition
• Visual perception better than in apperceptive
agnosia
• Not a naming deficit
(cannot indicate recognition by nonverbal means)
 Theories of
Associative Agnosia
1. Disconnection between visual
representations and language areas
2. Disconnection between visual
representations and memory areas
3. Stored visual memories have been
damaged
4. A perceptual and memory problem, and
the two are inseparable
 Perception & Memory
• Some visual problems
• Copying drawings on line by line
• On matching tasks, they rely on slow, sequential
featured-by-feature checking
 Apperceptive:
Localization of Damage
• Diffuse brain damage, often from
multiple infarcts or from other
global anoxic events: e.g. carbon
monoxide poisoning.
Apperceptive Associative
Associative Agnosia
 Prosopagnosia
• Prosopagnosia, also called face
blindness,is a cognitive disorder of 
face perception in which the ability to
recognize familiar faces, including one's
own face (self-recognition), is impaired,
while other aspects of visual processing
(e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual
functioning (e.g., decision making) remain
intact.
 Prosopagnosia
•  The specific brain area
usually associated with
prosopagnosia is the 
fusiform gyrus, which
activates specifically in
response to faces. The
functionality of the fusiform
gyrus allows most people to
recognize faces in more
detail than they do similarly
complex inanimate objects.
 Prosopagnosia
• There are two types of prosopagnosia:
acquired and congenital (developmental).
Acquired prosopagnosia results from
occipito-temporal lobe damage and is most
often found in adults. This is further
subdivided into apperceptive and
associative prosopagnosia. In congenital
prosopagnosia, the individual never
adequately develops the ability to recognize
faces.
Prosopagnosia(face blindness)
• Compensate by relying on nonfacial cues
(voice, gait, clothing..)
• With a few exceptions, they can
discriminate a face’s gender, ethnicity,
approximate age, and emotion conveyed.
• Patients who do not have problems
recognizing faces may have difficulty
recognizing the emotion.
Matching Faces Task
Test of Famous Faces
 Types Of Agnosia
• Face
• Object
• Printed Word
• Face, or face and object -- right or bilateral
• Word, or word and object – left
• Maximum overlap in left inferior medial
region (including parahippocampal,
fusiform, and lingual gyri)