Differential affection of the visual information sub-streams in a patient with visual agnosia

Introduction: Visual agnosia is a deficit of object recognition addressed to the damage of the ventral stream (VS). The dorsal stream (DS) is usually intact in these patients, and it can be derived from well-preserved reaching and grasping of visually presented objects. In this study, we presented a new case of a visual agnosic patient (AC) with an extensive lesion of the secondary visual cortex. Methods: We examined the kinematics of his grasping behavior towards common day-to-day objects compared to a healthy control group. Both colored and color-masked objects were presented, and participants were instructed to graspthen- name and name-then-grasp them. Results: The agnosic deficit was particularly evident when no color information was available to the patient: Although AC was able to recognize most colored objects with marked delay, his recognition of color-masked objects was very poor. Furthermore, the color-masked condition determined larger impairments in kinematic performance relative to the control group. Discussion: Results support the view that spared color processing in the VS allows for partial compensation of deficits. Color information is also processed along the DS, contributing to visuomotor transformations.