What Is Agnosia?
Agnosia is a term used to refer to the inability to process sensory information such as recognizing shapes, objects, sounds, people, or smells. It is a rare disorder where the affected individual is still able to speak, think, and interact with their environment. Agnosia tends to affect only one modality such as hearing or vision.
When agnosia affects the ability to recognize the geometric features of a face or object, the features are perceived but not recognized. For example, the affected person may have difficulty identifying a cup or the sound of a cough. There are many different types of agnosia such as akinetopsia, anosognosia, allotopagnosia, apperceptive visual agnosia, astereognosis, associative visual agnosia, cortical deafness, environmental agnosia, autotopagnosia, and more.
