Congenital prosopagnosia: A case report

Prosopagnosia is a visual agnosia characterized by an inability to recognize previously known human faces and to learn new faces. The aim of this study was to present a forty-six year-old woman with congenital prosopagnosia, and to discuss the neural bases of perception and recognition of faces. The patients had a lifetime impairment in recognizing faces of family members, close friends, and even her own face in photos. She also had impairment in recognizing animals such as discriminating between cats and dogs. The patient's basic visual skills showed impairment in identifying and recognizing the animal form perception on the coding subtest of the WAIS-R, recognizing overlapping pictures (Luria), and in identifying silhouettes depicting animals and objects (VOSP). Unconventional tests using pictures evidenced impairment in her capacity to identify famous faces, facial emotions and animals. Her face perception abilities were preserved, but recognition could not take place. Therefore, it appears that the agnosia in this case best fits the group of categories termed "associative".