Casati Carlotta, Diana Lorenzo, Casartelli Sara, Tesio Luigi, Vallar Giuseppe, Bolognini Nadia
Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Department of Neurorehabilitation Sciences, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milano, Italy.
Department of Psychology & NeuroMI-Milan Center for Neuroscience, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy.
J Neuropsychol. 2025 Mar;19 Suppl 1:97-112. doi: 10.1111/jnp.12391. Epub 2024 Sep 18.
The present case study describes the patient N.G., who reported prosopagnosia along with difficulty in recognising herself in the mirror following a left-sided temporo-occipital hemispheric stroke. The neuropsychological and experimental investigation revealed only a mild form of apperceptive prosopagnosia, without visual agnosia, primarily caused by an impaired visual processing of face-parts and body parts but not of full faces. Emotional expressions did not modulate her face processing. On the other hand, N.G. showed a marked impairment of visual self-recognition, as assessed with visual matching-to-sample tasks, both at the level of body-part and face-part processing and at a full-face level, featured by a deficit in the perceptual discrimination of her own face and body, as compared to the others' face and body. N.G.'s lesion mapping showed damage to the left inferior occipito-temporal cortex, affecting the inferior occipital gyrus and compromising long-range connections between the occipital/temporo-occipital areas and the anterior fronto-temporal areas. Overall, the present case report documents that visual processing of the person's own face may be selectively compromised by a left-sided hemispheric lesion disconnecting extra-striate body- and face-selective visual areas to self-representation regions. Moreover, others' (full) face processing may be preserved, as compared with the impaired ability to discriminate others' body and face parts.
本病例研究描述了患者N.G.，其在左侧颞枕叶半球中风后出现面孔失认症，同时难以在镜子中认出自己。神经心理学和实验研究仅发现一种轻度形式的知觉性面孔失认症，无视觉失认症，主要是由于对面部和身体部位的视觉处理受损，而非对完整面部的视觉处理受损。情绪表达并未调节她对面部的处理。另一方面，通过视觉样本匹配任务评估发现，N.G.在身体部位和面部部位处理水平以及完整面部水平上均表现出明显的视觉自我识别障碍，其特征是与他人的面部和身体相比，对自己的面部和身体的知觉辨别存在缺陷。N.G.的病变图谱显示左侧枕颞下皮质受损，影响枕下回，并损害了枕叶/颞枕叶区域与额颞前区域之间的长程连接。总体而言，本病例报告证明，人的自身面部视觉处理可能会因左侧半球病变而选择性受损，该病变使纹外身体和面部选择性视觉区域与自我表征区域断开连接。此外，与辨别他人身体和面部部位的受损能力相比，对他人（完整）面部的处理可能会保留。
