Nominal Aphasia: Problems in Name Retrieval

It happens to all of us occasionally. As you walk down the hallway you see a familiar face—someone you have recently met—you reach into your brain expecting a complicated series of synaptic firing to bring forth the name person in front of you only to be disappointed. Although you know it is there in the recesses of your mind, you cannot summon the name of your new acquaintance. You settle instead for the ubiquitous nod and the word “hello”. Where failure to occasionally recall the name of new acquaintance may feel uncomfortable, it typically does not create huge difficulties. For me this scenario happens all too often. Names of acquaintances and friends of less than a year’s duration frequently elude me at pivotal movements. Although my problem with name recall is worse for personal names, I also occasionally experience difficulties recalling the name of specific objects or “common names”. Indeed my friends and colleagues are familiar with me using the most round-about ways to identi ... Read full article.