Frank is a 71-year-old, right-handed male. He has come to his doctor complaining of an increasing difficulty with recognizing familiar people, including family members. In one instance, a woman started a conversation with him on the street, and it was not until he recognized her voice that he realized she was an ex-wife of his and that they’d had a child!
Frank was found to have normal visual acuity, and was referred to a neurologist and neuropsychologist team. After extensive testing, Frank’s results were compiled. Here are some of them:
| Test | Administration | Frank’s Performance |
|---|---|---|
| Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) | The WAIS is a series of subtests intended to assess verbal abilities (such as Information, Comprehension, Arithmetic, etc.) and non-verbal abilities (such as Picture Completion, Picture Arrangement). | Superior on all portions, both verbal and non-verbal. |
| Visual Object and Space Perception Battery | A series of subtests that assess ability to perceive both objects and space; these include dot counting, recognizing objects in silhouette, and discriminating between a line drawing of a “real” object and several nonsense distractor objects. | Performed poorly on the object decision and silhouette tasks, but well on dot counting and other spatial tasks. |
| Benton Facial Recognition Test | Patients are shown black-and-white photographs of full faces. They are first given a face to examine, and then asked which of six faces matches this “target” face. Then they are shown photos with only ¾ of the face showing and again asked to match one to the “target” face. Finally, they are shown photos that were taken under low lighting conditions and asked to match one to the “target” face. | Able to correctly perceive age, sex, and emotions in the faces. However, his matching performance was in the low to average range. It seemed he was most able to correctly match faces when focusing on specific features of each face (such as a mustache) and not the entire face. |
Frank’s overall language and executive functioning skills were normal, however.
Frank also showed a reduced ability to distinguish between famous and non-famous faces when shown photographs. He was only able to name four out of 40 celebrities by looking at their photographs.
Questions
- What condition or conditions (there may be more than one possibility) are being described in this case?
- What brain area or area(s) may be involved? Be sure to consider which visual stream is involved. Is there a specific hemisphere that is affected? How do you know?
- How should these brain areas function normally? What could be causing this dysfunction?
- What do the assessments and their results tell you about this person’s abilities and condition?
Remember to document your sources!
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