Agnosia
Agnosia is the inability to process sensory information. Often there is a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss. It is usually associated with brain injury or neurological illness, particularly after damage to the occipitotemporal border, which is part of the ventral stream. Agnosia only affects a single modality, such as vision or hearing. More recently, a top-down interruption is considered to cause the disturbance of handling perceptual information.
Apperceptive agnosia
Apperceptive visual agnosia results in profound difficulties on a patient's ability to recognize visually presented information. Apperceptive agnosia affects the perceptual processing of individuals. Impairments of elements such as color and motion makes it difficult to interpret shape or the spatial arrangements of objects. Deficits in apperceptive agnosics have not been linked to deficits in acuity. Additionally, patients have an intact ability to attend to cued stimuli. They have the ability to maintain fixation, reach for moving targets, and write as well. Those with apperceptive agnosia, however, have difficultly copying geometric shapes and letters. In some cases individuals are able to trace letters and shapes with their finger but they are unable to use the technique as a strategy to name objects.