Abstract
A 62-year-old, right-handed woman complained of prosopagnosia and many other hemispheric symptoms due to recurrent cerebral hemorrhage involving bilateral cerebral hemispheres. Although “aphasia” or “optic aphasia” were not clearly differentiated, “aphasic factor” in a wider sense might be responsible for producing word finding difficulty recognized after the left hemisphere damage. But impaired categorization demonstrated in the present case might have been partially caused by agnosic factor (i. e. associative visual agnosia). Although prosopagnosia due to right hemisphere damage existed only for a short time (less than five months), impairment of recognission of unfamiliar faces has remained persistantly. A localization of bilateral lesions demonstrated by the brain CT scan did not occupy the medial portion of the occipital lobe but deviated more laterally. Furthermore, an incogruent right-sided homonymous hemianopsia was also detected. These findings were different from the classical ones reported hitherto. The facts that disturbed discrimination of unfamiliar faces and impairment of other visuo-spatial perceptions persisted without improvement might suggest an interference from the damage in the contralateral left hemisphere.
