Definition
Agnosia is a failure to recognize a sensory stimulus that is not attributable to dysfunction of peripheral sensory mechanisms or to other cognitive impairments associated with brain damage (Bauer 2012). Agnosia is often described as a percept that is “stripped of its meaning” (Teuber 1968). The individual can respond to the presence of the stimulus but has difficulty processing the perceptual information in sufficient detail to make sense of and meaningfully recognize the stimulus. The difficulty is modality specific (e.g., visual), so the stimulus can be recognized through other sensory modalities (e.g., tactile or auditory).
Current Knowledge
Different forms of agnosia have been described that depend upon the detail with which the incoming stimulus is processed and the sensory modality and type of materials that pose difficulty. Lissauer (1890) used the terms apperceptive and associative, to classify the agnosias, terms that continue to guide descriptions of agnosia...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References and Readings
Bauer, R. M. (2012). Agnosia. In K. M. Heilman & E. Valenstein (Eds.), Clinical neuropsychology (5th ed., pp. 238–295). New York: Oxford University Press.
Farah, M. J. (2004). Visual agnosia (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Feinberg, T. E., Rothi, L. J. G., & Heilman, K. M. (1986). Multimodal agnosia after unilateral left hemisphere lesion. Neurology, 36, 864–867.
Gainotti, G. (2014). Familiar people recognition disorders: An introductory review. Frontiers in Bioscience, S6, 58–64.
Lissauer, H. (1890). Ein fall von seelenblindheit nebst einem beitrage zur theorie derselben. Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, 21, 222–270.
Teuber, H. L. (1968). Alteration of perception and memory in man. In L. Weiskrantz (Ed.), Analysis of behavioral change. New York: Harper & Row.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Raymer, A. (2017). Agnosia. In: Kreutzer, J., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_850-4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56782-2_850-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56782-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56782-2
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences