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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 -
Brain Sciences Feb 2022Developmental prosopagnosia (DP)-or 'face blindness'-refers to life-long problems with facial recognition in the absence of brain injury. We know that neurodevelopmental...
Developmental prosopagnosia (DP)-or 'face blindness'-refers to life-long problems with facial recognition in the absence of brain injury. We know that neurodevelopmental disorders tend to co-occur, and this study aims to explore if individuals with self-reported DP also report indications of other neurodevelopmental disorders, deficits, or conditions (developmental comorbidity). In total, 115 individuals with self-reported DP participated in this online cross-sectional survey. Face recognition impairment was measured with a validated self-report instrument. Indications of difficulties with navigation, math, reading, or spelling were measured with a tailored questionnaire using items from published sources. Additional diagnoses were measured with direct questions. We also included open-ended questions about cognitive strengths and difficulties. Results: Overall, 57% reported at minimum one developmental comorbidity of interest, with most reflecting specific cognitive impairment (e.g., in memory or object recognition) rather than diagnostic categories (e.g., ADHD, dyslexia). Interestingly, many participants reported cognitive skills or strengths within the same domains that others reported impairment, indicating a diverse pattern of cognitive strengths and difficulties in this sample. The frequency and diversity of self-reported developmental comorbidity suggests that face recognition could be important to consider in future investigations of neurodevelopmental comorbidity patterns.
PubMed: 35203993
DOI: 10.3390/brainsci12020230 -
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 -
Royal Society Open Science Sep 2020The issue of the face specificity of recognition deficits in developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is fundamental to the organization of high-level visual memory and has been...
The issue of the face specificity of recognition deficits in developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is fundamental to the organization of high-level visual memory and has been increasingly debated in recent years. Previous DP investigations have found some evidence of object recognition impairments, but have almost exclusively used familiar objects (e.g. cars), where performance may depend on acquired object-specific experience and related visual expertise. An object recognition test not influenced by experience could provide a better, less contaminated measure of DPs' object recognition abilities. To investigate this, in the current study we tested 30 DPs and 30 matched controls on a novel object memory test (NOMT Ziggerins) and the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). DPs with severe impairment on the CFMT showed no differences in accuracy or reaction times compared with controls on the NOMT. We found similar results when comparing DPs with a larger sample of 274 web-based controls. Additional individual analyses demonstrated that the rate of object recognition impairment in DPs did not differ from the rate of impairment in either control group. Together, these results demonstrate unimpaired object recognition in DPs for a class of novel objects that serves as a powerful index for broader novel object recognition capacity.
PubMed: 33047056
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.200988 -
Frontiers in Psychiatry 2021Pica in Alzheimer's disease (AD) makes it difficult for caregivers to provide care. However, few effective medications have been reported for pica in AD. We report a...
Pica in Alzheimer's disease (AD) makes it difficult for caregivers to provide care. However, few effective medications have been reported for pica in AD. We report a case of AD with pica that was successfully improved by trazodone and fluvoxamine. An 80-year-old woman with AD was admitted to our hospital due to aggravated pica, including eating weeds in the facility's garden and eating a dishwashing sponge. Her pica was accompanied by oral tendency, prosopagnosia, and placidity. She took rivastigmine and memantine, but these were ineffective for her pica. She was given olanzapine and perospirone, but both were discontinued due to over-sedation and severe extrapyramidal symptoms, respectively. We then administered trazodone and fluvoxamine, both of which have demonstrated effectiveness for pica in frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Her pica behaviors then disappeared without daytime sleepiness. In this case, pica with oral tendency, which was accompanied by prosopagnosia and placidity, may be interpreted as a partial symptom of Klüver-Bucy syndrome (KBS). KBS is often seen in FTD, but also occurs in late-stage AD. Our case together with previous reports showing that trazodone and fluvoxamine were effective for pica in FTD suggest that the same common drug therapy may be successful in pica with oral tendency, regardless of the subtype of dementia.
PubMed: 34276453
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.704847 -
Surgical Neurology International 2022Prosopagnosia is a rare form of apraxia, in which a person has normal memory and vision, but has impaired cognition of human faces that are manifested through symptoms...
BACKGROUND
Prosopagnosia is a rare form of apraxia, in which a person has normal memory and vision, but has impaired cognition of human faces that are manifested through symptoms such as not being able to recognize the face of a familiar person, one has known or not being able to remember the face of a person. Here, we report the case of a patient with transient prosopagnosia associated with brain metastasis from epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutated lung adenocarcinoma who was treated with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs).
CASE DESCRIPTION
A 52-year-old right-handed man with lung adenocarcinoma was introduced to our department because brain metastasis. On admission, he complained that he could not recognize his wife's face, but he could recall her face based on her voice. MRI revealed a right temporo-occipital enhancing lesion with perifocal edema and dissemination that were indicative of brain metastasis from lung adenocarcinoma. Two weeks after open biopsy, he was started on TKI therapy with osimertinib at a dosage of 80 mg/day. An MRI scan taken 1 month later revealed shrinkage of the metastasis. In addition, he had recovered from transient prosopagnosia and returned to normal life.
CONCLUSION
In this study, the TKI osimertinib was administered to a patient with brain metastasis of EGFR-mutated lung adenocarcinoma who presented with prosopagnosia, and the patient's lesion shrunk and his symptoms were reversed with this treatment.
PubMed: 35855154
DOI: 10.25259/SNI_500_2022 -
Royal Society Open Science Sep 2020Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a cognitive condition characterized by a relatively selective impairment in face recognition. Currently, people are screened for DP...
Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a cognitive condition characterized by a relatively selective impairment in face recognition. Currently, people are screened for DP via a single attempt at objective face-processing tests, usually all presented on the same day. However, several variables probably influence performance on these tests irrespective of actual ability, and the influence of repeat administration is also unknown. Here, we assess, for the first known time, the test-retest reliability of the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT)-the leading task used worldwide to diagnose DP. This value was found to fall just below psychometric standards, and single-case analyses revealed further inconsistencies in performance that were not driven by testing location (online or in-person), nor the time-lapse between attempts. Later administration of an alternative version of the CFMT (the CFMT-Aus) was also found to be valuable in confirming borderline cases. Finally, we found that performance on the first 48 trials of the CFMT was equally as sensitive as the full 72-item score, suggesting that the instrument may be shortened for testing efficiency. We consider the implications of these findings for existing diagnostic protocols, concluding that two independent tasks of unfamiliar face memory should be completed on separate days.
PubMed: 33047048
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.200884 -
Brain Sciences Feb 2023Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by face recognition problems. Psychometrically sound self-report measures of face...
Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by face recognition problems. Psychometrically sound self-report measures of face recognition problems are important tools in classification of DP. A widely used measure of such problems is the 20-item prosopagnosia index (PI20). Here, we present a Danish translation of the PI20 (PI20). We administered the PI20 alongside three objective measures of face and object processing performance to 119 participants to validate the PI20. Further, we assess the underlying factor structure of the PI20. Finally, as the first study in the field, we investigate the association between self-reported face recognition ability and face perception performance. The project was preregistered prior to data collection. The results suggest excellent convergent validity, discriminant validity and internal consistency for the PI20. A confirmatory factor analysis, however, indicates a suboptimal fit of the PI20 to a one factor solution. An investigation of the association between the PI20 and face perception suggests that the poor fit may reflect that the PI20 measures problems with face recognition in general and not specifically face memory problems.
PubMed: 36831880
DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13020337 -
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 -
Brain : a Journal of Neurology Oct 2021
Topics: Brain Mapping; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Prosopagnosia
PubMed: 34273156
DOI: 10.1093/brain/awab276