Visual object agnosia, prosopagnosia, achromatopsia, loss of visual imagery, and autobiographical amnesia following recovery from cortical blindness: Case M.H.

Abstract

A number of higher visual deficits accompanied by severe retrograde autobiographical memory loss following bilateral medial occipital infarctions are described in case M.H. Assessment of M.H.'s visual object agnosia and prospagnosia suggested that he was unable to integrate the elements of a percept to form a meaningful whole. This deficit may occur at the level the percept is encoded into the visual buffer and inspected. M.H. also describes a loss of visual memories, and it is hypothesized that this may similarly be a result of an inability to integrate the elements of the visual representation (e.g. of an object or face) following its generation from long-term visual memory store into the visual buffer. M.H.'s retrograde autobiographical memory loss is postulated to be a consequence of the severe impoverishment of episodic memories that must occur when events originally stored multimodally, must be recalled without any visual component.