The Cognitive Psychophysiology of Prosopagnosia

Abstract

Prosopagnosia is a rare neurobehavioral syndrome in which a patient with brain damage becomes unable to recognize previously familiar persons by visual reference to their facial features (Bodamer, 1947; Bauer & Rubens, 1985). It is distinct from disorders in the perceptual processing of previously unfamiliar faces (Benton, 1980) and is dissociable from specific impairments in learning new faces seen as part of a more general visual recent memory deficit (Ross, 1980). In many cases, the disorder extends to famous faces and may even prevent identification of the patient’s own face in a mirror. Prosopagnosics invariably recognize faces as faces, and are able to achieve immediate and certain recognition when they hear the person’s voice or when some informative extrafacial visual cue (clothing, gait, etc.) is available. Prosopagnosia cannot be solely attributed to aphasic misnaming or to perceptual impairment, since tests of language and visual perception are usually performed at normal or near-normal levels (cf. Bauer & Rubens, 1985 for review).