Browsing by Author "Rasmus, Enni"

Introduction The purpose of this review is to point out different variants of acquired prosopagnosia and to review and discuss if the variants are distinctive of one another by their neural mechanisms and clinical symptoms. Discussion about diagnostics and rehabilitation of acquired prosopagnosia will also be made. Conclusions were based on two research questions. First, it was hypothesized that the neural findings would support the existence of different variants of acquired prosopagnosia. Second, it was questioned what forms of rehabilitation would help the most. Methods The source material was defined with help of three reviews of high quality which were published in Frontiers in Bioscience during the year 2014. Sources were rounded out with OvidMedline search. Terms of search used were prosopagnosia, acquired prosopagnosia, developmental prosopagnosia, congenital prosopagnosia, rehabilitation, covert recognition, ICD-10-CM and neural mechanism. Results and Conclusions Based on this review, a point can be made that the neural findings partly support the existence of different variants of acquired prosopagnosia; the apperceptive variant is usually a consequence of injury in the posterior occipital temporal axis whereas the anterior injury causes the associative variant in most of the cases. Distinctiveness of these variants is also supported by double dissociative symptoms which include covert recognition and the imagery of faces. There is some initial research from which a conclusion could be made that rehabilitation could benefit patients with acquired prosopagnosia. There is not much information about acquired prosopagnosia in Finland. Raised awareness of acquired prosopagnosia amongst healthcare professionals could help diagnostics and to give more optimal treatment. Patients with acquired prosopagnosia usually learn effective but cognitively demanding coping mechanisms. Research in treatment possibilities could help professionals to rehabilitate more effectively but also understand the psychosocial problems that may rise up with the disorder.