The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

P was having problems with the left side of his brain. Sacks’ initial examination revealed that Dr. He could observe the visual world around him but derive no holistic meaning from it. P suffered instead from agnosia-an inability to recognize and interpret visual data. P went to an ophthalmologist, he discovered that his eyes were not the problem. P was known to pat inanimate objects like parking meters and fire hydrants, thinking they were children. He also had the opposite problem-seeing faces where there were none. P seemed to be unable to recognize the faces of his students and only knew them when they spoke or played their instruments. P after the man’s wife reported that her husband was having strange problems with visual recognition. P from The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a distinguished professor of music. We can see a clear example of a neurological deficit in the strange case of Dr. Damage to Broca’s area, for example, is known to cause aphasia-the inability to process and understand written or spoken language. A deficit is some impairment of neurological function, usually linked to brain damage to some particular area.

Neurologists often speak of brain disorders in terms of deficits. in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat The Agnosia of Dr. P because he did, literally, mistake his wife’s head for a floating hat.Ĭontinue on for more information about the case study of Dr. P was a patient who suffered from left-hemisphere damage and had trouble identifying what he was seeing. In the book of psychological case studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Dr. P’s case teach author Oliver Sacks about left-hemisphere damage? P from The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat? What did Dr. Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading. This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat' by Oliver Sacks.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks