VISUOVERBAL DISCONNECTION AND ITS ANATOMICAL CONSTRAINTS IN OPTIC APHASIA

We discuss the case of a patient, A.B., who presented the pattern of p erformance usually called Optic Aphasia (OA). She was severely impaire d at naming of visually presented objects-that she was able to identif y-while tactile naming and naming to definition were significantly bet ter. In addition to visual anemia, the patient also showed a deficit i n categorizing pictures and in tasks requiring access to associative k nowledge from vision. We interpret our results in line with the explan ation proposed by Coslett and Saffran (1989), i.e., a disconnection be tween right and left hemisphere semantics. However, we suggest to inte grate their account with Shallice's (1988) multiple semantic systems m odel.