What's the Name?

Many a man, when he cannot recall a name that he knows perfectly well, shrugs it off with "getting forgetful," or even "Freudian, no doubt. Must be the name of some guy who was mean to me when I was a kid." This is right most of the time. But every now & then, doctors have a case in which a patient has no memory for names at all--not even the names of close kin. It may get so bad that he forgets the names of common articles, so that when he wants a pen he will ask for "something to write with," though he can pick the right name out of a list. Nerve specialists have given this complaint a number of names; the University of Virginia's Dr. Cary Suter. who has studied it closely, likes "anomic aphasia" best.

The trouble is not actually a loss of memory, says Dr. Suter in the A.M.A. Journal, but a defect in the part of the brain which governs associations between objects and the words which stand for them. This seems to be a specific region on the dominant (usually the left) side of the brain. It may have been damaged by a stroke, or by hardening of the cerebral arteries. In such cases, nothing can be done. But almost as often, Dr. Suter found in a series of 20 patients, the forgetting of names is caused by a tumor in this Association area of the brain.

Four-fifths of his cases had been misdiagnosed or overlooked, said Dr. Suter, and he urged doctors to be on the watch for this complaint, because it is one of the few symptoms that may give a clue to the location of a brain tumor. But he had a hopeful note: anomic aphasia is much less common now that middle-ear infections are so readily controlled by sulfas and antibiotics. And anybody who fails to remember the name "anomic aphasia" for more than a few minutes need not worry about it.

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