Journal article
Dissociating ‘what’ and ‘how’ in visual form agnosia: a computational investigation
Neuropsychologia, Vol.40(2), pp.187-204
2002
DOI: 10.1016/S0028-3932(01)00072-0
PMID: 11640941
Abstract
Patients with visual form agnosia exhibit a profound impairment in shape perception (what an object is) coupled with intact visuomotor functions (how to act on an object), demonstrating a dissociation between visual perception and action. How can these patients act on objects that they cannot perceive? Although two explanations of this ‘what–how’ dissociation have been offered, each explanation has shortcomings. A ‘pathway information’ account of the ‘what–how’ dissociation is presented in this paper. This account hypothesizes that ‘where’ and ‘how’ tasks require less information than ‘what’ tasks, thereby allowing ‘where/how’ to remain relatively spared in the face of neurological damage. Simulations with a neural network model test the predictions of the pathway information account. Following damage to an input layer common to the ‘what’ and ‘where/how’ pathways, the model performs object identification more poorly than spatial localization. Thus, the model offers a parsimonious explanation of differential ‘what–how’ performance in visual form agnosia. The simulation results are discussed in terms of their implications for visual form agnosia and other neuropsychological syndromes.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Dissociating ‘what’ and ‘how’ in visual form agnosia: a computational investigation
- Creators
- Shaun P Vecera - Department of Psychology, 11 Seashore Hall E, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1407, USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Neuropsychologia, Vol.40(2), pp.187-204
- Publisher
- Elsevier Ltd
- DOI
- 10.1016/S0028-3932(01)00072-0
- PMID
- 11640941
- ISSN
- 0028-3932
- eISSN
- 1873-3514
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2002
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984066142602771
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