Apperceptive and associative visual object agnosia in patients with acute ischemic stroke

Abstract

Visual object agnosia (VOA) is a loss of the ability to recognize visible objects in patients with the intact primary visual functions and in the absence of dementia. The apperceptive and associative variants of VOA are marked out. The apperceptive VOA is thought to be due to «pre-semantic» impairment of visual information processing. The associative VOA is caused by the loss of access to knowledge about the objects, and its semantic subtype is due to the disintegration of this knowledge itself. It is important to diagnose VOA and its variants in time to provide individualized approaches to medical rehabilitation of patients. Case reports of apperceptive and associative VOA in acute ischemic stroke are presented in this paper. These case reports indicate the possibility of the development of apperceptive and associative VOA in unilateral acute ischemic brain lesion. The variants of VOA can be recognized only by a detailed neuropsychological examination.