Two unpublished cases of prosopagnosia from Justo Gonzalo y Rodríguez-Leal’s archive

Alberto García-Molina, Área de Neuropsicología, Hospital de Neurorrehabilitación Institut Guttmann, Badalona, Barcelona, España; Facultad de Psicología, Departamento de Psicología Clínica y de la Salud, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, España; Fundació Institut d’Investigació en Ciències de la Salut Germans Trias i Pujol, Badalona, Barcelona, España; Facultad de Psicología, Centro de Estudios en Neurociencia Humana y Neuropsicología, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile, Chile
Isabel Gonzalo-Fonrodona, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas, Departamento de Óptica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, España

Throughout history, cases have been described of neurological patients who are unable to recognize familiar faces after suffering a brain injury. This disorder is called prosopagnosia. This article presents two previously unpublished clinical cases of this particular condition, located in the archive of Dr. Justo Gonzalo y Rodríguez-Leal (1910-1986). Both are part of a series of veterans of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) examined by this Spanish neuroscientist in the early 1950s at the Cerebral Physiopathology Laboratory of the former San Carlos Faculty of Medicine (Madrid, Spain). The first is a 32-year-old man, struck by a rifle bullet in the left occipital region during the Battle of Teruel. The second is a 20-year-old man with a bilateral occipital injury caused by a rifle bullet during the Battle of the Ebro.

Keywords: Percepción. Cara. Prosopagnosia. Agnosia fisonómica. Guerra Civil Española.