Bukach Cindy M, Bub Daniel N, Gauthier Isabel, Tarr Michael J
Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203, USA.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2006 Jan;18(1):48-63. doi: 10.1162/089892906775250094.
We document a seemingly unique case of severe prosopagnosia, L. R., who suffered damage to his anterior and inferior right temporal lobe as a result of a motor vehicle accident. We systematically investigated each of three factors associated with expert face recognition: fine-level discrimination, holistic processing, and configural processing (Experiments 1-3). Surprisingly, L. R. shows preservation of all three of these processes; that is, his performance in these experiments is comparable to that of normal controls. However, L. R. is only able to apply these processes over a limited spatial extent to the fine-level detail within faces. Thus, when the location of a given change is unpredictable (Experiment 3), L. R. exhibits normal detection of features and spatial configurations only for the lower half of each face. Similarly, when required to divide his attention over multiple face features, L. R. is able to determine the identity of only a single feature (Experiment 4). We discuss these results in the context of forming a better understanding of prosopagnosia and the mechanisms used in face recognition and visual expertise. We conclude that these mechanisms are not "all-or-none," but rather can be impaired incrementally, such that they may remain functional over a restricted spatial area. This conclusion is consistent with previous research suggesting that perceptual expertise is acquired in a spatially incremental manner [Gauthier, I., & Tarr, M. J. Unraveling mechanisms for expert object recognition: Bridging brain activity and behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 28, 431-446, 2002].
我们记录了一个看似独特的严重面孔失认症病例，患者L. R. 在一次机动车事故中右侧颞叶前部和下部受损。我们系统地研究了与专家面部识别相关的三个因素中的每一个：精细水平辨别、整体加工和构型加工（实验1 - 3）。令人惊讶的是，L. R. 在这三个过程中均表现出保留；也就是说，他在这些实验中的表现与正常对照组相当。然而，L. R. 只能在有限的空间范围内将这些过程应用于面部的精细细节。因此，当给定变化的位置不可预测时（实验3），L. R. 仅能正常检测每张脸下半部分的特征和空间构型。同样，当需要他将注意力分散到多个面部特征上时，L. R. 只能确定单个特征的身份（实验4）。我们在更好地理解面孔失认症以及面部识别和视觉专长所使用的机制的背景下讨论这些结果。我们得出结论，这些机制并非“全有或全无”，而是可能会逐渐受损，以至于它们可能在受限的空间区域内仍保持功能。这一结论与先前的研究一致，该研究表明感知专长是以空间递增的方式获得的[高蒂尔，I.，& 塔尔，M. J. 揭示专家物体识别机制：连接大脑活动与行为。《实验心理学杂志：人类感知与表现》，28，431 - 446，2002]。
