Three types of agnosia.

Abstract

Agnosia can be defined as ‘seeing without recognition’, and is often demonstrated to medical students as visual agnosia (seeing a pen but not knowing how to use it) or the inability to identify familiar faces (proposagnosia) as a result of focal brain injury. In the spiritual sense, agnostics are those who have been exposed to religion but do not believe. Surely as trained clinical scientists we do not have to worry about such things ourselves. Well maybe, but may I propose three types of agnosia that we might, on reflection, acknowledge? We may sometimes feel like hamsters on a wheel in medicine, working hard and making regular adjustments in service provision (sometimes expensive and disruptive) that don’t seem to make a difference. There …