Van den Stock Jan, van de Riet Wim A C, Righart Ruthger, de Gelder Beatrice
Laboratory of Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2008 Sep 17;3(9):e3195. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003195.
Many people experience transient difficulties in recognizing faces but only a small number of them cannot recognize their family members when meeting them unexpectedly. Such face blindness is associated with serious problems in everyday life. A better understanding of the neuro-functional basis of impaired face recognition may be achieved by a careful comparison with an equally unique object category and by a adding a more realistic setting involving neutral faces as well facial expressions. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neuro-functional basis of perceiving faces and bodies in three developmental prosopagnosics (DP) and matched healthy controls. Our approach involved materials consisting of neutral faces and bodies as well as faces and bodies expressing fear or happiness. The first main result is that the presence of emotional information has a different effect in the patient vs. the control group in the fusiform face area (FFA). Neutral faces trigger lower activation in the DP group, compared to the control group, while activation for facial expressions is the same in both groups. The second main result is that compared to controls, DPs have increased activation for bodies in the inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) and for neutral faces in the extrastriate body area (EBA), indicating that body and face sensitive processes are less categorically segregated in DP. Taken together our study shows the importance of using naturalistic emotional stimuli for a better understanding of developmental face deficits.
许多人在人脸识别方面会经历短暂的困难，但只有少数人在意外见到家人时无法认出他们。这种脸盲在日常生活中会带来严重问题。通过与同样独特的物体类别进行仔细比较，并增加一个涉及中性面孔以及面部表情的更现实场景，可能会更好地理解人脸识别受损的神经功能基础。我们使用事件相关功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来研究三名发育性面孔失认症患者（DP）和匹配的健康对照者对面孔和身体的感知的神经功能基础。我们的方法涉及由中性面孔和身体以及表达恐惧或快乐的面孔和身体组成的材料。第一个主要结果是，在梭状面孔区（FFA），情绪信息的存在对患者组和对照组有不同的影响。与对照组相比，中性面孔在DP组中引发的激活较低，而两组中面部表情的激活是相同的。第二个主要结果是，与对照组相比，DP患者在枕下回（IOG）中对身体的激活以及在纹外体区（EBA）中对中性面孔的激活增加，这表明在DP患者中，对身体和面孔敏感的过程在分类上的分离程度较低。综合来看，我们的研究表明使用自然主义情绪刺激对于更好地理解发育性面孔缺陷的重要性。
