Abstract
This paper reports on the cognitive functions of a case with associative visual agnosia following multiple cerebral infarctions. The patient was a 58-year old right handed man. The results of several perceptual and cognitive tests indicated that his apperception was preserved because he could accurately copy line drawings of objects or letters and could correctly match objects. He did not have cognitive disturbances in auditory and tactile modalities. However, in the visual modality he showed cognitive disturbances regardless of whether the stimulus was real objects, line drawings of objects, colors, faces or letters. This means that the patient had object agnosia, color naming disturbance, prospagnosia and alexia without agraphia. His symptoms were also different from optic aphasia, because of his inability to point to an object named by the examiner, to demonstrate how to use objects and to categorize objects. Based on these observations, the patient was considered to be a case of associative visual agnosia.
A medial aspect of the bilateral occipital lobe was identified as a major lesion in the patient. Compared with lesions of associative visual agnosia previously reported, it is a unique feature that the lesion of this patient in the right occipital lobe was relatively small.
