Bentin Shlomo, Degutis Joseph M, D'Esposito Mark, Robertson Lynn C
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. mscc.huji.ac.il
J Cogn Neurosci. 2007 Jan;19(1):132-46. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2007.19.1.132.
Neuropsychological, event-related potential (ERP), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methods were combined to provide a comprehensive description of performance and neurobiological profiles for K.W., a case of congenital prosopagnosia. We demonstrate that K.W.'s visual perception is characterized by almost unprecedented inability to identify faces, a large bias toward local features, and an extreme deficit in global/configural processing that is not confined to faces. This pattern could be appropriately labeled congenital integrative prosopagnosia, and accounts for some, albeit not all, cases of face recognition impairments without identifiable brain lesions. Absence of face selectivity is evident in both biological markers of face processing, fMRI (the fusiform face area [FFA]), and ERPs (N170). Nevertheless, these two neural signatures probably manifest different perceptual mechanisms. Whereas the N170 is triggered by the occurrence of physiognomic stimuli in the visual field, the deficient face-selective fMRI activation in the caudal brain correlates with the severity of global processing deficits. This correlation suggests that the FFA might be associated with global/configural computation, a crucial part of face identification.
我们结合神经心理学、事件相关电位（ERP）和功能磁共振成像（fMRI）方法，对先天性面孔失认症患者K.W.的表现和神经生物学特征进行了全面描述。我们证明，K.W.的视觉感知具有几乎前所未有的面孔识别能力缺失、对局部特征的强烈偏向以及不限于面孔的全局/构型加工极端缺陷的特征。这种模式可恰当地称为先天性整合面孔失认症，它解释了一些（尽管不是全部）无明显脑损伤的面孔识别障碍病例。面孔选择性的缺失在面孔加工的两种生物学标记中均很明显，即fMRI（梭状面孔区[FFA]）和ERP（N170）。然而，这两种神经特征可能表现出不同的感知机制。虽然N170由视野中相貌刺激物的出现触发，但大脑后部面孔选择性fMRI激活不足与全局加工缺陷的严重程度相关。这种相关性表明，FFA可能与全局/构型计算有关，而全局/构型计算是面孔识别的关键部分。
