Naming people ignoring semantics in a patient with left frontal damage.
Studies about proper name anomia generally assume that persons' names are harder to recall than other semantic information one knows about them and that name retrieval is not possible without biographical knowledge. We describe a patient, SB, who, after a left frontal haemorrhage, was unable to recall any biographical information about people she could name. Moreover, she had a normal score in an Object Picture Naming Test, but gave confabulatory answers in a Semantic Questionnaire involving the same items. The role of frontal function in producing this pattern of impairment is discussed, together with the possible existence of a direct route from visual perception to proper name retrieval.
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Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Palermo, Italy. costanza.p@iol.it
Muggia
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D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000647:Amnesia; D003463:Cues; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D020300:Intracranial Hemorrhages / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D020238:Prosopagnosia / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D012660:Semantics; D020521:Stroke / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed