Loss of visual imagery: A generation deficit

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Abstract
The case of a patient with an impairment in the ability both to generate visual images and to perform certain transformations upon visual images in reported. No impairment of long-term visual memory could be demonstrated, and the patient was able to perform various tasks on a perceptually derived image indicating that the visual buffer is probably intact. Either the patient has two distinct impairments: a generation deficit and transformation deficit, or these two problems are related and reflect an impairment of some form of imaged representation which is the repository both for images generated from long-term visual memory and for the images generated as a result of mental rotation on a perceptually given stimulus item. The imaged representation must be presumed to be distinct from the visual buffer. The case is also of interest since the patient (with a left hemisphere lesion) was impaired in mental rotations, a deficit typically associated with right hemisphere lesions.