Anaki David, Kaufman Yakir, Freedman Morris, Moscovitch Morris
Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, 3560 Bathurst St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6A
Neuropsychologia. 2007 Apr 9;45(8):1658-71. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.01.003. Epub 2007 Jan 13.
In associative agnosia early perceptual processing of faces or objects are considered to be intact, while the ability to access stored semantic information about the individual face or object is impaired. Recent claims, however, have asserted that associative agnosia is also characterized by deficits at the perceptual level, which are too subtle to be detected by current neuropsychological tests. Thus, the impaired identification of famous faces or common objects in associative agnosia stems from difficulties in extracting the minute perceptual details required to identify a face or an object. In the present study, we report the case of a patient DBO with a left occipital infarct, who shows impaired object and famous face recognition. Despite his disability, he exhibits a face inversion effect, and is able to select a famous face from among non-famous distractors. In addition, his performance is normal in an immediate and delayed recognition memory for faces, whose external features were deleted. His deficits in face recognition are apparent only when he is required to name a famous face, or select two faces from among a triad of famous figures based on their semantic relationships (a task which does not require access to names). The nature of his deficits in object perception and recognition are similar to his impairments in the face domain. This pattern of behavior supports the notion that apperceptive and associative agnosia reflect distinct and dissociated deficits, which result from damage to different stages of the face and object recognition process.
在联想性失认症中，面部或物体的早期感知处理被认为是完整的，而获取关于个体面部或物体的存储语义信息的能力则受损。然而，最近有观点认为，联想性失认症在感知层面也存在缺陷，只是这些缺陷过于细微，目前的神经心理学测试难以检测到。因此，联想性失认症中对名人面孔或常见物体的识别受损，源于提取识别面孔或物体所需的细微感知细节存在困难。在本研究中，我们报告了一例左枕叶梗死患者DBO，他表现出物体和名人面孔识别受损。尽管有残疾，但他表现出面孔倒置效应，并且能够从非名人干扰项中选出名人面孔。此外，对于外部特征被删除的面孔，他在即时和延迟识别记忆方面表现正常。只有当要求他说出名人面孔的名字，或者根据语义关系从一组三位名人中选出两张面孔（该任务不需要说出名字）时，他的面孔识别缺陷才会明显。他在物体感知和识别方面的缺陷性质与面部领域的损伤相似。这种行为模式支持了这样一种观点，即apperceptive和联想性失认症反映了不同且分离的缺陷，这些缺陷是由面部和物体识别过程不同阶段的损伤导致的。
