Foundations of prosopagnosia: The three classic Austro-German reports

Abstract

The term prosopagnosia was coined 78 years ago, in 1947. At that time few reports of a specific disorder of face recognition existed, the three most detailed being those of Wilbrand (1892), Hoff and Pötzl (1937), and Bodamer (1947). These laid the basis for much of our current thought about the manifestations of prosopagnosia, its associations, its structural basis, and theories about its functional mechanisms. However, since they were written in German and few current researchers are fluent in that language, these early works are relatively neglected today. In this review we discuss their highly detailed case descriptions, the prescient inductions they made from their clinical material, as well as their less successful speculations, with full translations provided as appendices. Familiarity with these older studies provides a perspective on the ongoing work in prosopagnosia.