BRAIN AND COGNITION 8, 147-164 (1988) A Case Study of Mental imagery Deficit MARTHA J. FARAH Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University DAVID N. LEVINE Neurology Service, Massachusetts General Hospital and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital AND RONALD CALVANIO Neuropsychology Service, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital We describe a patient with a deficit in imagery ability, following a left posterior cerebral artery infarction and possible anoxic episode. This deficit was inferred from the patient’s performance on several tasks, including one in which normal adults are known to rely on imagery and two that tested imagery nonverbally, allowing us to examine the possibility of a language-imagery disconnection. In addition, we queried the patient on some cognitive capacities related to visual imagery: dreaming, geographical knowledge, and introspection regarding visual and auditory imagery. Hypotheses concerning the critical lesion site and underlying cognitive mechanism of image generation deficits are discussed in relation to this and other recent cases of impaired imagery ability with intact recognition ability, and the relevance of this deficit to the “imagery debate” is discussed. 0 1988 Academic Press. Inc. A CASE STUDY OF MENTAL IMAGERY DEFICIT Mental imagery deficits have been noted in the neurological literature, usually in conjunction with a visual agnosia, since Charcot’s (Bernard, This research was supported by PHS fellowship F32 MH08876-01, NIH Grant NS 11408, and ONR Contract NOOQl4-86-K-0094. The authors thank Dr. Walter Panis for permission to examine his patient, and Drs. Neal Cohen, Howard Gardner, Jay Huff, and Francois Michel for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. We also thank R.M. for his help in this project. Address reprint requests to M. J. Farah, Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. 147 0278-2626188 $3.00 Copyright Q 1988 by Academic Press. Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.