1. Impaired integration of object knowledge and visual input in a case of ventral simultanagnosia with bilateral damage to area V4.
- Author
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Leek, E.Charles, d'Avossa, Giovanni, Tainturier, Marie-Josèphe, Roberts, DanielJ., Yuen, SungLai, Hu, Mo, and Rafal, Robert
- Subjects
BRAIN damage ,COGNITIVE ability ,REACTION time ,VISUAL perception ,FAMILIARITY (Psychology) ,SEMANTICS - Abstract
This study examines how brain damage can affect the cognitive processes that support the integration of sensory input and prior knowledge during shape perception. It is based on the first detailed study of acquired ventral simultanagnosia, which was found in a patient (M.T.) with posterior occipitotem-poral lesions encompassing V4 bilaterally. Despite showing normal object recognition for single items in both accuracy and response times (RTs), and intact low-level vision assessed across an exten-sive battery of tests, M.T. was impaired in object identification with overlapping figures displays. Task performance was modulated by familiarity: Unlike controls, M.T. was faster with overlapping displays of abstract shapes than with overlapping displays of common objects. His performance with overlap-ping common object displays was also influenced by both the semantic relatedness and visual similarity of the display items. These findings challenge claims that visual perception is driven solely by feedfor-ward mechanisms and show how brain damage can selectively impair high-level perceptual processes supporting the integration of stored knowledge and visual sensory input. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
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