book: the man who mistook his wife for a hat

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

by Oliver Sacks

neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks wrote an anecdotal book on some of his strangest patient cases.

the peticular case i'm interested in for this project is the books name sake "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" the story of a man called Mr.P (for the sake of patient confidenciality) who developes later in life an  accute and odd form of the condition known as Agnosia:- 

Visual agnosia is the inability of the brain to recognize or understand visual stimulus. An individual with visual agnosia has otherwise normal visual functioning and can see, but is unable to interpret or recognize what they are seeing. There is also no deficit in general mental ability (Rothi, Mack, & Heilman 1986)

In Mr.P's case he had trouble destinguishing people from objects including himself, recognising objects and people and describing or recognising scenes from pictureshe could describe them elequently and in great detail but could not see or recognise the object as a whole for instance in the book he is shown a glove by Stacks and is asked what it is MrP Examins and describes it as "A continuous surface, infolded on itself. it apears to have five out pouchings..."

and continues when asked for its use, "A container of some sort? - There are many posibilitys. It could be a change purse, for coins of five diferent sizes"

 only afer he accidently put it on dose he exclaim "my god its a glove" 

I would like to continue to look at this story for inspiration on how we perceve and recognise objects and process them how they relate to us, how we relate to them and so on.

also on the same tangent colour blindness is a form of agnosia called Achromatopsia