ONE OR SEVERAL SEMANTIC SYSTEM(S) - MAYBE NONE - EVIDENCE FROM A CASE-STUDY OF MODALITY AND CATEGORY-SPECIFIC SEMANTIC IMPAIRMENT

Following cerebral anoxia, EC, a 55-year-old patient, exhibited a seve re and clear-cut pattern of semantic impairments without general intel lectual deficit or perceptual difficulty. EC demonstrated a complex ne uropsychological picture including a massive visual agnosia and a comp lete lack of imagery, both of which involved all categories of objects (living and non living) and a category-specific word comprehension de ficit limited to animal names. Findings are discussed in the light of the theoretical frameworks currently available in the area of neuropsy chology. It is argued that neither the single nor the multiple view of semantics fully succeed in providing a satisfactory account of the da ta and a tentative interpretation of the whole pattern of impairment i s proposed in the general framework of non abstractive conceptions of meaning.