visual agnosia
Last reviewed 01/2018
Visual agnosia is the inability to understand the meaning of visual stimuli despite apparently normal vision. There is a loss of recognition of visual percepts.
There are two stages of visual agnosia:
- apperceptive agnosia:
- this is more severe and represents an inability to categorise or manipulate the visual percept in any way
- the patient may be unable to distinguish shape or say if they have seen an object before
- associative agnosia:
- this is less severe because a limited understanding of the relevance of a visual object is retained
- the patient may realise they are looking at a face but be unable to recognise who's face it is (prosopagnosia)