Cogn Neuropsychol. 2002 Feb 1;19(1):31-47. doi: 10.1080/02643290143000079.
The current study investigated the sensitivity of face recognition to two changes of the stimulus, a rotation in depth and an inversion, by comparing the performance of two prosopagnosic patients, RN and CR, with non-neurological control subjects on a face-matching task. The control subjects showed an effect of depth rotation, with errors and reaction times increasing systematically with rotation angle, and the traditional inversion effect, with errors and reaction times increasing under inverted conditions. In contrast, RN showed no effect of rotation or inversion on his error data but did show a less sensitively graded effect of rotation and the traditional inversion effect on reaction times. CR did not show a graded effect of rotation on his errors or reaction times. Although CR showed the traditional inversion effect on his error data, he displayed an inversion superiority effect on his reaction time data, which supports the claim that the damaged holistic processing systems continue to dominate face processing in prosopagnosia even though they are malfunctioning. These results suggest that the damage that occurs to the ventral temporal cortex in prosopagnosia may have forced the patients to rely on sources of information that are not dependent on the view of the face and, moreover, cannot be adapted to deal with rotated faces under both upright and inverted conditions.
本研究通过比较两位面孔失认症患者 RN 和 CR 与非神经控制组在面孔匹配任务上的表现，研究了面孔识别对两种刺激变化（深度旋转和反转）的敏感性。对照组表现出深度旋转效应，错误率和反应时随旋转角度系统增加，以及传统的反转效应，即倒置条件下错误率和反应时增加。相比之下，RN 在其错误数据上没有表现出旋转或反转效应，但在反应时上确实表现出旋转和传统反转效应的敏感性分级效应。CR 在其错误或反应时上没有表现出旋转的分级效应。尽管 CR 在其错误数据上表现出传统的反转效应，但他在反应时数据上表现出反转优势效应，这支持了受损的整体处理系统在面孔失认症中即使出现故障也会继续主导面孔处理的观点。这些结果表明，在面孔失认症中颞叶腹侧皮层的损伤可能迫使患者依赖于不依赖于面孔视角的信息来源，而且，无法适应在直立和倒置条件下处理旋转的面孔。
