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Journal of Autism and Developmental... Dec 2023Autism traits are common exclusionary criteria in developmental prosopagnosia (DP) studies. We investigated whether autism traits produce qualitatively different face...
Autism traits are common exclusionary criteria in developmental prosopagnosia (DP) studies. We investigated whether autism traits produce qualitatively different face processing in 43 DPs with high vs. low autism quotient (AQ) scores. Compared to controls (n = 27), face memory and perception were similarly deficient in the high- and low-AQ DPs, with the high-AQ DP group additionally showing deficient face emotion recognition. Task-based fMRI revealed reduced occipito-temporal face selectivity in both groups, with high-AQ DPs additionally demonstrating decreased posterior superior temporal sulcus selectivity. Resting-state fMRI showed similar reduced face-selective network connectivity in both DP groups compared with controls. Together, this demonstrates that high- and low-AQ DP groups have very similar face processing deficits, with additional facial emotion deficits in high-AQ DPs.
Topics: Humans; Facial Recognition; Prosopagnosia; Autistic Disorder; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Pattern Recognition, Visual
PubMed: 36173532
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-022-05705-w -
Cureus Mar 2024Prosopagnosia, also referred to as "face blindness," is a type of visual agnosia characterized by a decreased capacity to recognize familiar faces with a preserved...
Prosopagnosia, also referred to as "face blindness," is a type of visual agnosia characterized by a decreased capacity to recognize familiar faces with a preserved ability to identify individuals based on non-facial visual traits or voice. Prosopagnosia can be categorized as developmental (DP) or acquired (AP) owing to a variety of underlying conditions, including trauma, neurodegenerative diseases, stroke, neuroinfections, and, less frequently, malignancies. Facial recognition is a complex process in which different neuronal networks are involved. The infrequent but notable higher visual-processing abnormalities can be caused by lesions of the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) in the non-dominant temporal lobe. We report a rare case of AP in a 69-year-old patient who is right-hand dominant with rectal carcinoma cerebral metastases. The patient complained of dizziness, vertigo, falls, and trouble recognizing her family members' faces. The CT scan of the head with contrast revealed two metastatic brain lesions with vasogenic edema, as one of them was in the right cerebellar hemisphere, causing dislocation and compression of the ILF. Corticosteroids and osmotherapy were utilized as a conservative treatment approach, which resulted in the prosopagnosia being completely withdrawn. In conclusion, patients with primary brain tumors or metastatic disease rarely present with an isolated cognitive deficit such as prosopagnosia. Based on the anatomical features and the personalized approach, a conservative or surgical approach may be useful to improve higher cortical functioning.
PubMed: 38559526
DOI: 10.7759/cureus.55349 -
Scientific Reports Mar 2024Congenital Prosopagnosia (CP) is an innate impairment in face perception with heterogeneous characteristics. It is still unclear if and to what degree holistic...
Congenital Prosopagnosia (CP) is an innate impairment in face perception with heterogeneous characteristics. It is still unclear if and to what degree holistic processing of faces is disrupted in CP. Such disruption would be expected to lead to a focus on local features of the face. In this study, we used binocular rivalry (BR) to implicitly measure face perception in conditions that favour holistic or local processing. The underlying assumption is that if stimulus saliency affects the perceptual dominance of a given stimulus in BR, one can deduce how salient a stimulus is for a given group (here: participants with and without CP) based on the measured perceptual dominance. A further open question is whether the deficit in face processing in CP extends to the processing of the facial display of emotions. In experiment 1, we compared predominance of upright and inverted faces displaying different emotions (fearful, happy, neutral) vs. houses between participants with CP (N = 21) and with normal face perception (N = 21). The results suggest that CP observers process emotions in faces automatically but rely more on local features than controls. The inversion of faces, which is supposed to disturb holistic processing, affected controls in a more pronounced way than participants with CP. In experiment 2, we introduced the Thatcher effect in BR by inverting the eye and mouth regions of the presented faces in the hope of further increasing the effect of face inversion. However, our expectations were not borne out by the results. Critically, both experiments showed that inversion effects were more pronounced in controls than in CP, suggesting that holistic face processing is less relevant in CP. We find BR to be a useful implicit test for assessing visual processing specificities in neurological participants.
Topics: Humans; Facial Recognition; Prosopagnosia; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Visual Perception; Photic Stimulation
PubMed: 38509151
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55023-7 -
Neuropsychologia Nov 2023Neuroimaging and intracranial electrophysiological studies have consistently shown the largest and most consistent face-selective neural activity in the middle portion...
Neuroimaging and intracranial electrophysiological studies have consistently shown the largest and most consistent face-selective neural activity in the middle portion of the human right lateral fusiform gyrus ('fusiform face area(s)', FFA). Yet, direct evidence for the critical role of this region in face identity recognition (FIR) is still lacking. Here we report the first evidence of transient behavioral impairment of FIR during focal electrical stimulation of the right FFA. Upon stimulation of an electrode contact within this region, subject CJ, who shows typical FIR ability outside of stimulation, was transiently unable to point to pictures of famous faces among strangers and to match pictures of famous or unfamiliar faces presented simultaneously for their identity. Her performance at comparable tasks with other visual materials (written names, pictures of buildings) remained unaffected by stimulation at the same location. During right FFA stimulation, CJ consistently reported that simultaneously presented faces appeared as being the same identity, with little or no distortion of the spatial face configuration. Independent electrophysiological recordings showed the largest neural face-selective and face identity activity at the critical electrode contacts. Altogether, this extensive multimodal case report supports the causal role of the right FFA in FIR.
Topics: Female; Humans; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Prosopagnosia; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Facial Recognition; Temporal Lobe; Electric Stimulation; Photic Stimulation; Brain Mapping
PubMed: 37839512
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108705 -
Applied Neuropsychology. Adult Nov 2023Language impairments have not yet been fully explored in native Arabic speakers with semantic dementia (SD). The aim of this paper is to describe the impairments in...
INTRODUCTION
Language impairments have not yet been fully explored in native Arabic speakers with semantic dementia (SD). The aim of this paper is to describe the impairments in language in two Saudi Arabians with SD and to determine if their word reading within a sentence context would result in incorrect responses.
METHODS
Two patients with semantic dementia (one with right > left and the other with left > right temporal involvement) underwent a reading assessment in Arabic. Patients were asked to read a series of words within a sentence context in which the correct reading of the word was dependent on the context of the sentence. Thirty-four sentences were designed in which 17 Arabic homographs were used. The same homograph would occur in two separate sentences, in which the pronunciation and meaning would differ between sentences. Patients were also assessed using five other sentences that contained irregular pronouns of high frequency. Eighteen healthy controls were used as reference.
RESULTS
Both patients made errors in reading the target Arabic homographs; this was more pronounced in the patient with left > right variant of SD. The patient with right > left variant of SD also suffered from prosopagnosia.
CONCLUSION
Correct reading of Arabic words within the sentence context may be impaired from semantic language impairments in semantic dementia. The role of comprehension in the correct reading of words in Arabic sentences is important.
PubMed: 37917946
DOI: 10.1080/23279095.2023.2276436 -
Brain Sciences Jan 2024It is still a matter of debate whether developmental prosopagnosia is a disorder selective to faces or whether object recognition is also affected. In a previous study,...
It is still a matter of debate whether developmental prosopagnosia is a disorder selective to faces or whether object recognition is also affected. In a previous study, based on a small sample of developmental prosopagnosics (DPs; N = 10), we found impairments in both domains although the difficulties were most pronounced for faces. Importantly, impairments with faces and objects were systematically related. We suggested that that the seemingly disproportional impairment for faces in DP was likely to reflect differences between stimulus categories in visual similarity. Here, we aimed to replicate these findings in a larger, independent sample of DPs (N = 21) using the same experimental paradigms. Contrary to our previous results, we found no disproportional effect of visual similarity on performance with faces or objects in the new DP group when compared to controls (N = 21). The new DP group performed within the control range, and significantly better than the old DP-group, on sensitive and demanding object recognition tasks, and we can demonstrate a classical dissociation between face and object recognition at the group level. These findings are perhaps the strongest evidence yet presented for a face-specific deficit in developmental prosopagnosia.
PubMed: 38275527
DOI: 10.3390/brainsci14010107 -
Neuro-ophthalmology (Aeolus Press) 2024Vision specialists will benefit from increased awareness of posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) syndrome. Failure to adequately identify the chief complaint as a visual...
Vision specialists will benefit from increased awareness of posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) syndrome. Failure to adequately identify the chief complaint as a visual symptom may lead to incorrect diagnosis or diagnostic delay. A previously healthy, 59-year-old woman presented with a 5-year history of 'losing her stuff'. Upon psychiatric and neuro-ophthalmological evaluation, this symptom was better recognised as a feature of visual agnosia and simultanagnosia. She also presented with multiple previously unrecognised symptoms indicative of higher visual processing dysfunction, such as alexia without agraphia, ocular motor apraxia, optic ataxia, prosopagnosia, akinetopsia and topographagnosia, so further assessment to investigate for PCA was carried out. After a work-up including cognitive assessment, brain structural/functional imaging, and laboratory tests she was diagnosed with visual-variant Alzheimer's disease. Patients with PCA merit a detailed review of their symptoms, as well as the use of office tests such as cognitive evaluation tools, different types of perimetry, colour vision tests, and non-delayed psychiatric consultation for correct management and assessment. This report will emphasise five key aspects to be considered when evaluating patients with PCA.
PubMed: 38357623
DOI: 10.1080/01658107.2023.2257311 -
British Journal of Neurosurgery Aug 2023A 42-year-old lady presented with acute aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage and developed difficulty recognising faces (prosopagnosia), inability to process visual...
A 42-year-old lady presented with acute aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage and developed difficulty recognising faces (prosopagnosia), inability to process visual information in busy environments (simultagnosia) and difficulty to read (alexia). She was subsequently found to have superficial siderosis on MRI.
Topics: Female; Humans; Adult; Alexia, Pure; Siderosis; Agraphia; Dyslexia; Subarachnoid Hemorrhage
PubMed: 31790281
DOI: 10.1080/02688697.2019.1687848 -
Clinical Pediatrics Jun 2024
Topics: Humans; Aphasia; Headache; Prosopagnosia; Young Adult; Male; Female; Acute Disease; Diagnosis, Differential
PubMed: 37497923
DOI: 10.1177/00099228231190226 -
Behavior Research Methods Mar 2024The Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) is one of the most important measures of individual differences in face recognition and for the diagnosis of prosopagnosia. Having...
The Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) is one of the most important measures of individual differences in face recognition and for the diagnosis of prosopagnosia. Having two different CFMT versions using a different set of faces seems to improve the reliability of the evaluation. However, at the present time, there is only one Asian version of the test. In this study, we present the Cambridge Face Memory Test - Chinese Malaysian (CFMT-MY), a novel Asian CFMT using Chinese Malaysian faces. In Experiment 1, Chinese Malaysian participants (N = 134) completed two versions of the Asian CFMT and one object recognition test. The CFMT-MY showed a normal distribution, high internal reliability, high consistency and presented convergent and divergent validity. Additionally, in contrast to the original Asian CFMT, the CFMT-MY showed an increasing level of difficulties across stages. In Experiment 2, Caucasian participants (N = 135) completed the two versions of the Asian CFMT and the original Caucasian CFMT. Results showed that the CFMT-MY exhibited the other-race effect. Overall, the CFMT-MY seems to be suitable for the diagnosis of face recognition difficulties and could be used as a measure of face recognition ability by researchers who wish to examine face-related research questions such as individual differences or the other-race effect.
Topics: Humans; Recognition, Psychology; Reproducibility of Results; Neuropsychological Tests; Face; Facial Recognition; China
PubMed: 36971958
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02085-6