title: Gaze behaviour in hereditary prosopagnosia.
abstract: Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize someone by the face alone in the absence of sensory or intellectual impairment. In contrast to the acquired form of prosopagnosia we studied the congenital form. Since we could recently show that this form is inherited as a simple monogenic trait we called it hereditary form. To determine whether not only face recognition and neuronal processing but also the perceptual acquisition of facial information is specific to prosopagnosia, we studied the gaze behaviour of four hereditary prosopagnosics in comparison to matched control subjects. This rarely studied form of prosopagnosia ensures that deficits are limited to face recognition. Whereas the control participants focused their gaze on the central facial features, the hereditary prosopagnosics showed a significantly different gaze behaviour. They had a more dispersed gaze and also fixated external facial features. Thus, the face recognition impairment of the hereditary prosopagnosics is reflected in their gaze behaviour.
authors.affiliation: University of Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10F, 35394 Giessen, Germany. gudrun.schwarzer@psychol.uni-giessen.de
authors.forename: Gudrun
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schwarzer
authors.forename: Susanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Huber
authors.forename: Martina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grüter
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Grüter
authors.forename: Cornelia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gross
authors.forename: Melanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hipfel
authors.forename: Ingo
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kennerknecht
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020238:Prosopagnosia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index