ABSTRACT
Sensory agnosias are relatively uncommon clinical syndromes characterized by a failure of recognition that cannot be attributed to the loss of primary sensory function, inattentiveness, general mental impairment, or lack of familiarity with the stimulus (Fredericks 1969; Bauer 2003). In other words, sensory agnosias are disorders that are bracketed by failures of early sensory processing on the input side and inability to attend to or comprehend the output of high-level sensory processing on the output side. For example, a blind subject who fails to recognize a rose or a deaf subject who does not recognize the sound of a hammer driving a nail are not agnosic; similarly, a demented person who no longer knows what a hammer is would not be considered agnosic if he failed to recognize the object.
