Is this a new type of primary prosopagnosia, both progressive and apperceptive?

Abstract

Azusa Sugimoto1, Shinichi Koyama2, Akira Midorikawa3, Akinori Futamura1, Kiichi Ishiwata4, Kenji Ishii4, Michael W Miller5, Mitsuru Kawamura11Department of Neurology, Showa University School of Medicine, Tokyo, 2Design Psychology Unit, Department of Design Science, Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, Chiba, 3Department of Psychology, Faculty of Letters, Chuo University, Tokyo, 4Positron Medical Center, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Tokyo, 5Medical Sciences Training Programme, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, JapanAbstract: Prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces, has a history going back to Charcot and Hughlings-Jackson, but was first named by Bodamer in 1947. Its anatomical loci are still unclear. However, progressive prosopagnosia is normally linked to right dominant temporal lobe atrophy, and diagnosed as part of frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Here we report a case of prosopagnosia linked to posterior cortical atrophy. Although case reports of posterior cortical atrophy-prosopagnosia do already exist, it is normally described as an accessory symptom. The interest of our own posterior cortical atrophy patient, possibly the first such case, is that he had a rare apperceptive type of prosopagnosia unrelated to the associative, frontotemporal lobar degeneration-type.Keywords: dementia, Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, neuropsychology