Facial Recognition Deficits Research Articles

Implicit knowledge: new perspectives on unconscious processes.

Recent evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience indicates that brain-damaged patients and normal subjects can exhibit nonconscious or implicit knowledge of stimuli that they fail to recollect consciously or perceive explicitly. Dissociations between implicit and explicit knowledge, which have been observed across a variety of domains, tasks, and materials, raise fundamental questions about the nature of perception, memory, and consciousness. This article provides a selective review of relevant evidence and considers such phenomena as priming and implicit memory in amnesic patients and normal subjects, perception without awareness and "blindsight" in patients with damage to visual cortex, and nonconscious recognition of familiar faces in patients with facial-recognition deficits (prosopagnosia). A variety of theoretical approaches to implicit/explicit dissociations are considered. One view is that all of the various dissociations can be attributed to disruption or disconnection of a common mechanism underlying conscious experience; an alternative possibility is that each dissociation requires a separate explanation in terms of domain-specific processes and systems. More generally, it is concluded that rather than reflecting the operation of affectively charged unconscious processes of the kind invoked by psychodynamic or Freudian theorists, dissociations between implicit and explicit knowledge are a natural consequence of the ordinary computations of the brain.

Face recognition

The study of face-selective neurons in the monkey temporal lobe, and face recognition deficits in humans after brain damage have both become very active fields of investigation. Face-selective neurons appear to be members of ensembles for coding faces rather than individual face detectors or grandmother cells. They reflect the more general role of temporal cortex in pattern recognition. In humans there are a variety of face-processing impairments that result from damage to different areas, and which reflect interference at different levels of processing of the facial image.

Prosopamnesia and visuolimbic disconnection syndrome: A case study.

After a head injury, a 58-year-old patient presented a severe deficit in face recognition. Bilateral temporo-occipital hematomas were drained. Associated with this deficit in face recognition, the patient presented visual hypoemotionality (hyporeactivity to visual stimuli) and transient gustatory amnesia. Some topographic amnesia and mild anomia were also present. Five years later, difficulties in face recognition and visual hypoemotionality remained unchanged. It was observed that the major impairment was related to a lack of memory for faces. Defects in visual imagery were also present. Some distinctions between agnosia for faces (prosopagnosia) and amnesia for faces (prosopamnesia) are introduced. The brain mechanisms of prosopagnosia ,prosopamnesia, and visual hypoemotionality are considered.

Right hemisphere superiority in the recognition of famous faces

Words and famous faces were tachistoscopically presented in bilateral view to normal right-handed subjects. A left visual field advantage was obtained for famous faces whether naming or recognition from an array was required and a right visual field advantage was obtained for words. While the finding of a left visual field advantage for the recognition of famous faces is consistent with studies of face recognition deficits in brain-damaged patients, a right visual field advantage for the recognition of famous faces has recently been reported in normal subjects. Possible explanations for this discrepancy are discussed.