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Prosopagnosia was due to a right occipito-temporal infarct, but clinical and computed tomographic features emphasized a previous symmetrical damage in the left side. The case reported, and especially elaboration of literature data relative to this peculiar type of visual agnosia, suggest that bilaterality of cerebral lesions in the determining factor of prosopagnosia.

One hundred and twenty patients with unilateral cerebral hemisphere damage (54 aphasics, 21 non-aphasic left and 45 right brain-damaged patients and 57 control subjects without cerebral lesions were given a battery of verbal and non-verbal tests of autotopagnosia, with the aim of studying the relationships between disorders of body schema and the side of the hemispheric lesion. A second aspect of our research consisted in understanding whether impairment in naming and pointing to body parts following verbal commands was really a specific symptom or if the same difficulty was found when patients were asked to name or to point to parts of objects other than the human body. Our results have shown that: 1) the aphasic patients are significantly more impaired than the non-aphasic patients on all the tests, non-verbal as well as verbal; 2) when results obtained on tests of naming and of pointing to parts of the human body were matched with results obtained on tests of naming and of pointing to parts of objects other than the human body, no difference could be demonstrated. These findings suggest that autotopagnosia is a nonspecific symptom, and that it does not find a satisfactory explanation in terms of "disorders of the body schema".

Two cases are described: one with left occipital lesion and the other one with bilateral occipital damage; the first showed deficit of Mental Imagery and preserved recognition of pictures in unusual perspective; the second, vice-versa, showed integrity of Mental Imagery and deficit in visual recognition. The relationship between Mental Imagery and recognition of pictures in unusual perspective is discussed.

In order to find out how frequent prosopagnosia is in males in comparison to females, all cases hitherto published have been reviewed and a remarkably greater frequency in males has been pointed out. Since the etiology has resulted to be in the majority of cases vascular, the epidemiology of vascular diseases as possible factor of this different incidence is discussed. It is concluded that the greater frequency observed in males seem to be a real fact inherent to prosopagnosia, and not related to other factors.

Following an ischemic accident in the territory of the left posterior cerebral artery, a 71 year-old woman had a severe disorder of visual recognition of objects while she quickly identified them by touch. Visual recognition of pictures, written symbols, colours and, to a lesser degree, faces was also impaired. A careful examination showed that the patient's defect could not be accounted for by general intellectual impairment, language disorder, visual acuity, or pattern discrimination deficit. These findings are consistent with the classical concept of associative agnosia: the pathophysiology of the syndrome is discussed.