Agnosia: Tactile

Catherine L. Reed

Everyday object recognition involves contributions from all of our senses. We recognize objects not only by their shape and color, but also by their sounds, textures, and temperatures. Our brains are organized to integrate information across senses, but each sense has its own separate neural object recognition system. To understand how the brain achieves multisensory object recognition, researchers examine how brain damage leads to the selective failure of recognition by an individual sensory system. This entry focuses on how impairments of tactile object recognition, or tactile agnosia, contribute to our understanding of normal object recognition. The entry reviews issues regarding different types of tactile agnosia, brain regions involved in tactile agnosia, sensory and motor contributions to tactile agnosia, and the existence of tactile agnosia separate from visuospatial disorders. Agnosia is defined as the impaired recognition of familiar objects, faces, or sounds, despite adequate perceptual and intellectual capabilities. Tactile agnosia , ...

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