Defective revisualization: dissociation between cognitive and imagistic thought case report and short review of the literature.
A 38-year-old shifted-sinistral patient displayed a definite deficit in visual imagery accompanied by defective dreaming capacity, loss of hypnagogic imagery, some defects in topographical memory, a mild unilateral right spatial neglect and mild difficulties in right-left orientation on the examiner's body. CT-scan and NMR studies showed evidence of an inborn hypoplasia of the right hemisphere and a stretched corpus callosum in its posterior and superior part. The vicarious compensatory action of the cognitive-verbal function of the defect of visual imagery was obvious. It is concluded that: there are various forms of visual imagery deficits: some are "pure" whereas in the great majority of reported cases the loss of visual imagery is associated to different forms of visual agnosia; the brain mechanisms underlying cognitive thought and imagistic thought could be obviously dissociated.
D000328:Adult; D001334:Automobile Driving; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000002:abnormalities; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D004325:Dreams / Q000502:physiology; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D019965:Neurocognitive Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed; D014796:Visual Perception