weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (03/06/86)
I am cross-posting to net.med from net.philosophy: In article <570@hoptoad.uucp> laura@hoptoad.UUCP (Laura Creighton) writes: >In article <3363@umcp-cs.UUCP> mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes: >>It appears to be >>attached to several brain areas; one can destroy the recognition function by >>damaging the area, but one cannot change it so that, for instance, photos of >>JFK and of flowerpots are confused, but nothing else is changed. > >Actually, from the people recovering from strokes I have dealt with, >I am not sure that your last sentence is correct. Some stroke >victims appear to have something approaching this problem -- they >get ``lampshades'' and ``umbrellas'' confused, for instance. I don't >know whether this means that their concepts are confused, or whether >they just get the wrong word when they do the mental search for the >name of the concept. I like to skim through _Brain and Language_ every so often. A recent issue contained an interesting case, where a woman lost the ability to name fruits and vegetables. She still recognized them and could use them functionally and understood their names, but was incapable of saying "apple" or "spinach". This is a very minor aphasia. My guess is that most stroke victims lose some incredibly minor part of their former mind, so minor that no one ever notices. Thus, if a stroke victim lost nothing but the ability to distinguish photos of JFK from flowerpots, I doubt the difficulty would show up before the patient is sent home. The attending physicians, nurses, relatives, and other patients may notice that the patient is ever so slightly more respectful to the flowerpots, but probably not. And in more realistic variants, not even that minor clue will show up. If a sixty year old stroke victim lost his ability to distinguish WWII air- planes--an ability he hasn't cared about in forty years--and nothing else, no one could be expected to notice. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720