title: Face-specific impairment in holistic perception following focal lesion of the right anterior temporal lobe.
abstract: Recent studies have provided solid evidence for pure cases of prosopagnosia following brain damage. The patients reported so far have posterior lesions encompassing either or both the right inferior occipital cortex and fusiform gyrus, and exhibit a critical impairment in generating a sufficiently detailed holistic percept to individualize faces. Here, we extended these observations to include the prosopagnosic patient LR (Bukach, Bub, Gauthier, & Tarr, 2006), whose damage is restricted to the anterior region of the right temporal lobe. First, we report that LR is able to discriminate parametrically defined individual exemplars of nonface object categories as accurately and quickly as typical observers, which suggests that the visual similarity account of prosopagnosia does not explain his impairments. Then, we show that LR does not present with the typical face inversion effect, whole-part advantage, or composite face effect and, therefore, has impaired holistic perception of individual faces. Moreover, the patient is more impaired at matching faces when the facial part he fixates is masked than when it is selectively revealed by means of gaze contingency. Altogether these observations support the view that the nature of the critical face impairment does not differ qualitatively across patients with acquired prosopagnosia, regardless of the localization of brain damage: all these patients appear to be impaired to some extent at what constitutes the heart of our visual expertise with faces, namely holistic perception at a sufficiently fine-grained level of resolution to discriminate exemplars of the face class efficiently. This conclusion raises issues regarding the existing criteria for diagnosis/classification of patients as cases of apperceptive or associative prosopagnosia.
authors: Institute of Research in Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Université de Toulouse, UPS, Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (CNRS, Cerco), Toulouse, France. Electronic address: thomas.busigny@uclouvain.be.
authors: Thomas
authors: T
authors: Busigny
authors: Institute of Research in Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
authors: Goedele
authors: G
authors: Van Belle
authors: Neuroscience and Cognitive Electrophysiology Research Lab, Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies, Montréal, Canada.
authors: Boutheina
authors: B
authors: Jemel
authors: Neuroscience and Cognitive Electrophysiology Research Lab, Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies, Montréal, Canada.
authors: Anthony
authors: A
authors: Hosein
authors: Département de Psychologie, Université de Montreal & Centre de Recherche Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal, Canada.
authors: Sven
authors: S
authors: Joubert
authors: Institute of Research in Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
authors: Bruno
authors: B
authors: Rossion
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000150:complications* / Q000473:pathology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005145:Face; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000473:pathology*; D015898:Tomography Scanners, X-Ray Computed
keywords: Acquired prosopagnosia; Anterior temporal lobe; Face perception; Holistic perception; Right hemisphere