Abstract
The performance of two patients with visual agnosia is compared across a number of tests examining visual processing. The patients are distinguished by having dorsal and ventral extrastriate lesions. Clear differences emerge such that inanimate objects are disadvantaged for the patient with a dorsal extrastriate lesion, while animate items are disadvantaged for the patient with the ventral extrastriate lesion. The patients also show contrasting patterns of performance on the Navon Test: the patient with a dorsal extrastriate lesion processing at a local level while the patient with a ventral extrastriaite lesion processing at a global level. We propose that the dorsal and ventral visual pathways may be characterised at an extra-striate level by the differences in local relative to more global visual processing, and that this can link to visually-based category-specific deficits in processing.