ABSTRACT
The post-mortem study of the very first cases of prosopagnosia, those of Wilbrand (1892) and Heidenhain (1927), revealed bilateral lesions of the central visual system. By then, the term prosopagnosia had not been coined (it was introduced by Bodamer only in 1947) and, for numerous reasons, the concept of a visual agnosia predominantly involving the recognition of familiar faces was not accepted and not incorporated in the scientific literature. The pathological correlates of the disorder were just as neglected. The defect appeared bizarre and many investigators found it difficult to believe it could indeed occur. Was it not possible that such patients were malingering, or hysterical, or psychotic, or merely demented? The rarity of the description cast doubt on the probability of similar cases surfacing again. Sir Gordon Holmes' work on the organization of the visual system, by focusing on surviving patients with gunshot wounds of the occipitoparietal region, failed to identify cases of prosopagnosia and thus, by default, further strengthened the reluctance in accepting the complaint as real or, if real, as truly neurological (Holmes, 1918a, 1918b, 1919). In the past 2 decades, however, there has been a resurgence of interest on prosopagnosia. The first new contributions on the problem appeared at a time when the neuropsychological study of patients with right hemisphere lesions and of surgical callosal section had uncovered the right hemisphere's special endowment for visuo-spatial processing. Under the weight of such evidence, facial recognition came to be conceptualized as a typical right hemisphere ability and, naturally, it was hypothesized that prosopagnosia was the result of exclusive right hemisphere damage.
