The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat Summary

Summary of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

In the article, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a nephrologist discusses a curious case of prosopagnosia. Dr. P is a professor at the School of Music. He has a rare form of face blindness call prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces. Depending on the degree of impairment some individuals may also not have the ability to recognizes other stimuli, such as objects, cars, or animals. Also, many individuals with this neurological disorder have deficits in aspects of face processing, such as judging age or gender, recognizing certain emotional expressions, or following the direction of a person's eye gaze (Bate). Dr. P a severe

case of prosopagnosia and displays all of these deficits. Dr. P students were the first to notice Dr. P inability to recognize faces. Due to their insistence, Dr. P saw an ophthalmologist. The ophthalmologist examined his eyes and advised there was nothing physically wrong with his eyes but the with the visual parts of his brain. He was than referred by the ophthalmologist to a neurologist, whom is the narrator of this article. During examination the neurologist noticed Dr. P was studying his individual features of his face but not his face as a whole. Dr. P can recognize an individual’s face by their distinct features, such as a mole on the face but not the face as a whole. During the exam, Dr. P was given a rose by the neurologist. It is evident during the exam that Dr. P does not go about the usual methods of identity the rose. He makes the following comments about the rose, “About six inches in length. A convoluted red form with a linear green attachment.” No until he smelled the rose was he able to identify it correctly.

Dr. P approaches faces and objects as if they are an abstract puzzle. In the exam of the rose he was able to attend to color or shape but not the rose as a whole. During the exam Dr. P did not give any indication that his approach to recognizing the rose was anything but usual way of identifying it. Dr. P had lost the inability to recognize objects and faces as a whole unless they are divided into their abstract parts. With this loss of visual part of his brain his brain can up with different pathway to still come visual, see the object and faces he was looking at. Also during the exam Dr. P wife explains Dr. P. functions by making little songs about what he is doing--dressing, washing or eating. He would use songs in place of visual parts of his brain. Uses songs for eating bathing and clothing. If the song is interrupted, he stops what he is doing till he finds his sensorium a clue and then can proceed. The neurologist also comments that Dr. P is a case that contradicts the fundamental axiom of classical neurology: that an individual will reduce or remove the ability to think in abstract. The example of the way Dr. P recognized the rose shows although he has lost the ability to recognize the

individual and the concrete he is still able to think in the abstract.
Prosopagnosia
As previously stated, prosopagnosia, is a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces.

Depending on the degree of impairment some individuals may experience symptoms such as the inability to recognizes other stimuli, such as objects, cars, or animals. Also, many individuals with this neurological disorder have deficits in aspects of face processing, such as judging age or gender, recognizing certain emotional expressions, or following the direction of a person's eye gaze (Bates). There are two causes of prosopagnosia (PA) developmental and acquired. “Developmental PA are individuals whose prosopagnosia are genetic in nature, individuals who experienced brain damage prior to experience with faces (prenatal brain damage or immediate brain damage), and individuals who experienced brain damage or severe visual problems during childhood.”(2017). Acquired PA are individuals who used to have normal face recognition, but due brain damage suffered after maturity from head trauma, stroke, and degenerative diseases they no longer able to recognize faces (2017). Dr. P prosopagnosia is caused by acquired brain damage due to a degenerative disease. We can infer that Dr. P has a degenerative disease by his types of paintings earlier in his life and how they evolved. The author of the article, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” put it perfectly, “Dr. P art works moved from realism to non-representation to the abstract, but this was not the artist, but the

pathology, advancing—advancing towards a profound visual agnosia, in which all powers of representation and imagery, all senses of the concrete, all sense of reality, were being destroyed,” thus indicating that the pathology is a degenerative disease. The specific brain area usually associated with prosopagnosia is the fusiform gyrus which is located in the temporal lobe. This area is primarily response for responses to faces (Prosopagnosia). Symptoms of prosopagnosia include difficulty recognizing familiar objects, and familiar people. Acquired prosopagnosia is a rare condition. The prevalence and incidence in the United States of acquired prosopagnosia is undetermined because it is a rare disease. Besides some single cases there is no data on epidemiology of this disease thus the prevalence and incidence of acquired prosopagnosia is unknown. Prior to the study conducted in Germany, it was thought that congential PA was rare. This study found that it is very common cognitive disorder and usually run in families. The study at the Germany University found that among 689 local pupils and medical students they found that 17 had congenital PA. This corresponds to a prevalence rate of 2.47%. The population most effected by acquired PA are those with strokes, degenerative disease and head trauma. Those with development PA are those with that have it run in the family. Although there is no formal treatment for prosopagnosia, Dr. Sarah Bate laboratory at Bournemouth University recently published that training programs to help develop compensatory strategies or temporary pharmaceutical intervention can help treat PA (Bates.).