title: A Qualitative Impairment in Face Perception in Alzheimer's Disease: Evidence from a Reduced Face Inversion Effect.
abstract: Prevalent face recognition difficulties in Alzheimer's disease (AD) have typically been attributed to the underlying episodic and semantic memory impairment. The aim of the current study was to determine if AD patients are also impaired at the perceptual level for faces, more specifically at extracting a visual representation of an individual face. To address this question, we investigated the matching of simultaneously presented individual faces and of other nonface familiar shapes (cars), at both upright and inverted orientation, in a group of mild AD patients and in a group of healthy older controls matched for age and education. AD patients showed a reduced inversion effect (i.e., larger performance for upright than inverted stimuli) for faces, but not for cars, both in terms of error rates and response times. While healthy participants showed a much larger decrease in performance for faces than for cars with inversion, the inversion effect did not differ significantly for faces and cars in AD. This abnormal inversion effect for faces was observed in a large subset of individual patients with AD. These results suggest that AD patients have deficits in higher-level visual processes, more specifically at perceiving individual faces, a function that relies on holistic representations specific to upright face stimuli. These deficits, combined with their memory impairment, may contribute to the difficulties in recognizing familiar people that are often reported in patients suffering from the disease and by their caregivers.
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.|Centre de recherche Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM), Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Marie Maxime
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Lavallée
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.|Centre de recherche Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM), Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Delphine
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gandini
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Canada.|Centre de recherche du Centre hospitalier universitaire de Montréal (CHUM), Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Rouleau
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.|Centre de recherche Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM), Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Guillaume T
authors.initials: GT
authors.lastname: Vallet
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.|Centre de recherche Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM), Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Maude
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Joannette
authors.affiliation: Département de médecine, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.|Clinique de cognition, Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Marie-Jeanne
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Kergoat
authors.affiliation: CHU Purpan, Toulouse, France.|Institut de Recherche en Sciences Psychologique et institut de Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Busigny
authors.affiliation: Institut de Recherche en Sciences Psychologique et institut de Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rossion
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.|Centre de recherche Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM), Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Sven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Joubert
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000150:complications*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005145:Face; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013223:Statistics as Topic
keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; face inversion effect; face recognition; vision; visuoperceptual processing