ABSTRACT
The inferior temporal lobes, and particularly the fusiform gyrus and surrounding regions, are important for face recognition. The medial temporal lobe, particularly the hippocampus and adjacent cortex, is important for episodic memory. Apperceptive' visual agnosias are deficits in object perception where elementary visual features are correctly extracted from the stimulus. Recognition of objects in other sensory modalities is better than visual object recognition. Associative' agnosias may also result from an impairment of object concepts. Object decision tasks can be performed well, but people with a deficit at this level have difficulty in retrieving conceptual information about objects with all modalities of input. As major visual perceptual impairments are rare in post-stroke aphasia, the optimal strategy is to first test for good access to object concepts. Only if significant impairment is found would it be worth while to examine earlier stages of processing.
