DIFFICULTY RECALLING PEOPLES NAMES

Background: Difficulty recalling people's names is common in the adult population, especially in the elderly. The subject is scarcely mentio ned in the literature, An 82-year-old patient gave the history that fo r 33 years he had made prospective observations on his own difficulty with people's names. Method: Documentation and analysis of the patient 's personal observations in which his ability to recall the names of f riends, acquaintances, colleagues, public figures, movie stars and ath letes is compared with that of his spouse. A suitable test-battery for the names of famous North American persons was not available. Results : The patient's capability in recalling people's names was clearly inf erior to that of his spouse. The patient's intellect was otherwise int act and the impairment seemed to be isolated to the category of proper -naming. Doubts were raised about the patient's own conclusion that th e deficit was progressive. Conclusions: A parallel may be drawn betwee n benign difficulty recalling people's names and the acquired categori cal deficit for proper naming reported in the literature in recent yea rs. Based on Damasio's concept of anatomically compartmentalized senso ry subsystems, it is hypothesized that our patient's symptom represent s an innate limited capacity for proper naming.