Prosopagnosia

Auto accidents are very dangerous and can cause damage to the brain. Theresa suffered a head injury due to a car accident. She had damage to her right temporal lobe. Theresa cannot recognize her mother’s face, but she can accurately recall many of her mother’s distinctive facial features. Theresa has a type of associative agnosia. Theresa was not born with it so, she remembers what her mother looks like but cannot recognize her face.

The inability to recognize familiar object presented visually is known as visual agnosia. “Visual agnosia can be broadly conceptualized as an impairment in the higher visual processes necessary for object recognition, with relative preservation of elementary visual functions. This impairment occurs in the absence
Prosopagnosia is also known a “face blindness” (Headway 1). Prosopagnosia is” A form of visual agnosia in which a person cannot recognize familiar faces, despite adequate elementary visual function (visual fields, acuity, and color vision)” (Agnosia 27). Patients’ with prosopagnosia, could accurately describe the features of someone they were looking at, but not be able to recognize them as a son, daughter, partner or friend. “People with this condition cannot tell the difference between faces an ability most of us take for granted” (Headway 1). “The pure form of the condition does not result from generalized difficulties in memory or visual perception, and is not associated with mental confusion” (Headway 1). “Instead, people appear to have selective difficulties in face recognition alone. Indeed, they can still access all their stored knowledge about a person once they know their name, and they can still recognize other types of objects. However, the pure form of prosopagnosia is very rare, and most people who acquire face recognition difficulties after brain injury experience other cognitive and visual difficulties alongside the condition. This occurs because brain injury tends to affect a number of brain regions, causing multiple difficulties,” (Headway