auditory agnosia

n. Inability to recognize and understand auditory information in the absence of decreased auditory acuity for pure tones. Normal auditory perception supposes the ability to recognize and discriminate differences among sounds. Auditory perception for verbal information implies the ability to recognize functional language sounds (phonemes). Auditory agnosia is observed in cases of damage of temporal auditory association areas. The auditory association area in the left hemisphere corresponds to the Wernicke’s area. Two major subtypes of auditory agnosia are described: verbal auditory agnosia (inability to recognize the functional language sounds, that is, the language phonemes; in its most extreme form, it is known as pure word deafness, but in Wernicke’s aphasia some phoneme discrimination defects may be found) and nonverbal auditory agnosia (inability to recognize and understand nonverbal auditory information). 一 AA

►See also agnosia, auditory perception, wernicke^,s aphasia, and word deafness