Partial Cortical Blindness With Preservation of Color Vision

It is a fact long established by clinical observation and pathologic studies that cortical and subcortical lesions may give rise to dissociation of color perception from visual acuity, namely, loss of the former without impairment of the latter ; and it is well known that in impairment of vision, whether peripheral or central, the first to be lost and the last to be regained is the perception of color. In addition to this dissociation between color and light perception, other types of dissociation in the recognition and naming of various colors have been described. Paralleling the disturbances in the realms of speech and general sensation, distinction is made between color agnosia and loss of color vision. For instance, a patient may fail to recognize or distinguish colors and yet retain the memory of color. These dissociations and the pathologic and psychologic problems to which they give rise, and particularly