The Man Who Mistook HIs Wife for a Hat

Notes:

Dr. P was a singer, musician and teacher. He began to lose his recognition of people, specifically faces. Only the voice would help him recognize humans. 3 years later, he was diagnosed with diabetes. Mistook inadamant objects, such as a fire hydrant, for people's faces.

Writes Dr. Sacks

"In there was just a teasing strangeness, some failure in the interplay of gaze and expression".

Cortex damaged- which is a prerequisite for all pictorial imagery. Curious on the parietal and occipital lobes function especially where visual passing occurred. Dr. P was able to identify by pulling out and recognizing one or two specific features, and then he could guess the whole person. We see the person through his persona, his face and expression. Dr. Pat saw nothing as familiar. Only the systematic and mechanical observation of a computer. "He lacked sensoral imagery or emotional reality."

The leftness had a visual deficiency. He would be able to describe a vision in his mind, but only everything on the right side of his eyesight. Even if he knew what was on his left. His brain literally omitted all the physical material that which was to his left. It was an internal and external bisecting of his visual memory and imagination. Furthermore he omitted any visual characteristics of faces and scenes, narratives and drama, when describing plays and stories. What was left where very descriptive, and usually enhanced schemata. The vivid imagination was lost, but a the message of the game or play was conveyed in non visual terms.

"He did everything singing to himself. All tasks, such as bathing, eating, dressing self. But if he was interrupted and loses a thread, he comes to a complete stop, doesn't know his own clothes, or his body. He couldn't do anything unless he make it a song " described his wife. "He had no body-image, he had body-music:this is why he could move and act as fluently as he did but came to a total confused stop if the 'inner-music' stopped". And equally with the outside world- recognizing people through their movements but not if they stood still.