D. Rectem

A Case of Prosopagnosia With Some Preserved Covert Remembrance of Familiar Faces

This paper presents the detailed analysis of a case of prosopagnosia in a 54-year-old male farmer following bioccipital vascular disease. In-depth clinical investigations confirmed the diagnosis of prosopagnosia and revealed the absence of any associated defect, except for a slight aspecific disturbance of the short-term memory. Further study of this case indicated that the trouble was not concerned with the class of complex visual stimuli, was not even concerned with facial expressions or unknown faces, was not a perceptual defect, but was related mainly to the operation of individualization. The memory hypothesis was thus retained and supported. Moreover, exploration of the difficulty indicated that the deficiency was limited to defective access to conscious information concerning faces and information associated with these faces (name, context, etc.), effectively stored in memory.

Is slowly progressive aphasia actually a new clinical entity

Abstract We report detailed observations on a 54-year-old woman who presented with a slowly progressive aphasia of the Broca type without signs of deterioration. She was administered standardized language and cognitive neuropsychological tests over a period of 2 years. A study of the brain glucose metabolism by PET scan indicated an isolated left temporal hypometabolism. From a review of the published cases and our own study, we propose that these cases could be considered a variant of Alzheimers or Picks diseases, the latter in our own case.

Anatomical and Behavioral-study of a Case of Asymptomatic Callosal Agenesis

This paper presents radiological and behavioral observations of a case of asymptomatic congenital agenesis of the corpus callosum. CT scan data indicated that a small portion of the corpus callosum might have been preserved, although this is difficult to demonstrate with the usual criteria. Nuclear magnetic resonance showed the small preserved portion on the sagittal plane. The results of the behavioral studies agree well with already published data: the agenesis of the callosum does not induce a split-brain syndrome but does cause slight motor disturbances, an improvement of the ipsilateral paths of control, and the development of extra-callosal interhemispheric pathways.