The Mind Detective Seminars: Case study
Seminar week 3
Patient case study
Whats gone wrong?
Labourer
RTA
Skull fracture, brain contrusion, haematoma (operated to clear)
WAIS --> performance = 50
Verbal = 83
Control mean is 100
Digit span 5 (slightly low but in normal range)
Language
No word finding difficulties
Spontaneous speech well formed and grammatical
Intact oral spelling
Alexia with agraphia (reading and writing)
Retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia for verbal material – these deficits decreased
with time
Vision
Problem identifying objects by sight
Problem identifying objects by pictures
, Objects identified by touch
Impaired at naming colours
Impaired at matching colour to item
Colour discrimination fine
Object naming problem
Distinguish between visual agnosia, anomia and optic aphasia
Apperceptive = copying problems/associative = can copy but not recognise
Visual agnosia = problems recognising objects from vision
Anomia = problems naming objects
Optic aphasia = problems naming objects but can identify from sight or touch
Tests
Touch recognise object and describe --> semantic system intact if succeed (but do other
tests too)
Descriptions of objects --> apperceptive may have damage to visual description system
Associative --> damage somewhere around semantics system
Name objects from their verbal definitions --> good
Name objects from touch --> medium
Name visually presented --> poor
Gestures how to use object could be ok when name was incorrect (semantic but non-verbal)
Suggests problem in the visual input/representation part (output naming intact from other
tasks)
Seminar week 4
So far
Patient is not agnosic
As agnosic patient could not recognise object patient here could gesture when name was
incorrect
Semantic system must be accessed in some way as patient knows gestures
Optic aphasia – can gesture correctly for objects they cannot name
Optic aphasia explanations
- Damage effecting communication between left and right hemisphere? (anatomical)
- Functional two kinds of semantics (visual and verbal)
- Visual = what they look like and what things link to this, actions that can be done with object
(based on structural form)
- Verbal = name of object
- Some arguments that semantic system is not divided in this way
Other possibilities
- Gestures are not precise and are hard to score
- Rough information to drive gestures could come from visual information alone without
knowing what the object is (structure gives idea of what you can do with it)
Seminar week 3
Patient case study
Whats gone wrong?
Labourer
RTA
Skull fracture, brain contrusion, haematoma (operated to clear)
WAIS --> performance = 50
Verbal = 83
Control mean is 100
Digit span 5 (slightly low but in normal range)
Language
No word finding difficulties
Spontaneous speech well formed and grammatical
Intact oral spelling
Alexia with agraphia (reading and writing)
Retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia for verbal material – these deficits decreased
with time
Vision
Problem identifying objects by sight
Problem identifying objects by pictures
, Objects identified by touch
Impaired at naming colours
Impaired at matching colour to item
Colour discrimination fine
Object naming problem
Distinguish between visual agnosia, anomia and optic aphasia
Apperceptive = copying problems/associative = can copy but not recognise
Visual agnosia = problems recognising objects from vision
Anomia = problems naming objects
Optic aphasia = problems naming objects but can identify from sight or touch
Tests
Touch recognise object and describe --> semantic system intact if succeed (but do other
tests too)
Descriptions of objects --> apperceptive may have damage to visual description system
Associative --> damage somewhere around semantics system
Name objects from their verbal definitions --> good
Name objects from touch --> medium
Name visually presented --> poor
Gestures how to use object could be ok when name was incorrect (semantic but non-verbal)
Suggests problem in the visual input/representation part (output naming intact from other
tasks)
Seminar week 4
So far
Patient is not agnosic
As agnosic patient could not recognise object patient here could gesture when name was
incorrect
Semantic system must be accessed in some way as patient knows gestures
Optic aphasia – can gesture correctly for objects they cannot name
Optic aphasia explanations
- Damage effecting communication between left and right hemisphere? (anatomical)
- Functional two kinds of semantics (visual and verbal)
- Visual = what they look like and what things link to this, actions that can be done with object
(based on structural form)
- Verbal = name of object
- Some arguments that semantic system is not divided in this way
Other possibilities
- Gestures are not precise and are hard to score
- Rough information to drive gestures could come from visual information alone without
knowing what the object is (structure gives idea of what you can do with it)
