Proper and Common Names: Impairments of Anomia

Proper names essentially refer to individual entities while common names refer to categories. This fact makes the link proper names have with their reference particularly fragile. As a consequence, processing proper names seems to require special cognitive and neural resources. Neuropsychological dissociations demonstrate that proper names and common names follow functionally and anatomically distinct neural networks. These networks might have been shaped by precise evolutionary demands. Their precise location and working, depending on specific tasks, is still partly unknown. They are, moreover, differently sensitive to focal or generalized brain damage, cognitive changes with age, or lack of organic resources. The sensitivity of proper names to brain damage makes them a useful clinical tool in the early diagnosis of mental deterioration.