SELECTIVE PROPER NAME ANEMIA - A CASE INVOLVING ONLY CONTEMPORARY CELEBRITIES

Following a left thalamic stroke, GR presented a complex neuropsycholo gical picture characterised by learning defects and autobiographical a mnesia, as well as proper name anemia. About 1 year after the stroke, GR recovered from his autobiographical amnesia, although his learning defects remained unchanged. Extensive testing demonstrated fine-graine d, selective involvement of people's names in the absence of aphasia, dementia, or frontal disorders. The defect involved names (and not per son knowledge) of contemporary personalities and spared historical and literary figures. Recovery from autobiographical amnesia showed that, in the case of autobiographical people, GR was not suffering from ane mia, but from amnesia for whole person knowledge: Indeed, no anemic de fect persisted after the amnesia had cleared. Since traditional catego ry-specific lexical explanations proved to be unsuitable for this case , the nature of GR's dissociated proper name deficit is discussed in t he light of Burton and Bruce's (1992) Interactive Activation Model and Brennen's (1993) Plausible Phonology Hypothesis.