[Visual agnosia without right hemianopia in a right-handed patient (author's transl)]

A right-handed 77-year-old man presented with a left homonymous lateral hemianopsia involving the macula. Consciousness, memory, and oral language were normal, but the patient experienced great difficulties in identifying objects and images by sight, even though he recognized their geometrical shapes. He also had prosopagnosia, and alexia without agraphia but no agnosia for colours. The patient died suddenly 6 weeks after the onset of the disorders. Pathological examination demonstrated the presence of a bilateral occipital infarct involving on the right, the inferior border of the calcarine fissure, and the lingual and fusiform gyri, and on the left the fusiform gyrus. This supports the role in man of the inferior occipitotemporal convolutions in the perceptual integration of visual informations, and suggests that this region of the cortex is analogous with the inferotemporal cortex of monkeys which has been shown to be a determinant for the elaboration of visual objects.