Impairments of Biological Motion Perception in Congenital Prosopagnosia

Abstract

Prosopagnosia is a deficit in recognizing people from their faces. Acquired prosopagnosia results after brain damage, developmental or congenital prosopagnosia (CP) is not caused by brain lesion, but has presumably been present from early childhood onwards. Since other sensory, perceptual, and cognitive abilities are largely spared, CP is considered to be a stimulus-specific deficit, limited to face processing. Given that recent behavioral and imaging studies indicate a close relationship of face and biological-motion perception in healthy adults, we hypothesized that biological motion processing should be impaired in CP. Five individuals with CP and ten matched healthy controls were tested with diverse biological-motion stimuli and tasks. Four of the CP individuals showed severe deficits in biological-motion processing, while one performed within the lower range of the controls. A discriminant analysis classified all participants correctly with a very high probability for each participant. These findings demonstrate that in CP, impaired perception of faces can be accompanied by impaired biological-motion perception. We discuss implications for dedicated and shared mechanisms involved in the perception of faces and biological motion.

Phasic alertness enhances processing of face and non-face stimuli in congenital prosopagnosia

“…The difference in performance observed for the CPs in the no-alert condition, compared to the alert one, is particularly intriguing given previous interpretation by Weinbach & Henik (2011; The results are consistent with previous findings indicating that CPs exhibit difficulties in deriving global/ holistic perception using face and non-face stimuli (Avidan, et al, 2011;Barton, 2009;Bentin, et al, 2007;Kimchi, et al, 2012;Lange, et al, 2009;Palermo, et al, 2011;Tanzer, et al, 2013) and stress the critical role of these impaired mechanisms in the deficiency in these individuals.…”

“…Hence, for the purpose of the present study, we will Accumulating findings show that individuals with CP experience a difficulty in deriving holistic relations between facial features (e.g., eyes, nose and mouth) and a bias toward local processing of faces (Avidan, Tanzer, & Behrmann, 2011;Behrmann, Avidan, Marotta, & Kimchi, 2005;Kimchi, Behrmann, Avidan, & Amishav, 2012;Lange et al, 2009;Palermo, et al, 2011;Susilo, et al, 2010. But see also (DeGutis, Chatterjee, Mercado, & Nakayama, 2012a;Le Grand et al, 2006).…”

“…Despite the lack of full consistency across studies indicated above, there is evidence implicating that disruption in holistic processing in prosopagnosia is also apparent for non-facial stimuli (Avidan, et al, 2011;Bentin, et al, 2007;Lange, et al, 2009;Le Grand, et al, 2006;Schmalzl, et al, 2008a;Tanzer, Freud, Ganel, & Avidan, 2013). For example, in a previous study we used a variation of the Garner speeded classification task tailored to assess holistic processing.…”

“…Our next goal is to directly examine the effect of an alerting cue on upright face processing, known to be linked to global/holistic processing (Avidan, et al, 2011;Gao et al, 2011) and to be impaired in CPs (Avidan, et al, 2011;Bentin, et al, 2007;Kimchi, et al, 2012;Lange, et al, 2009;Palermo, et al, 2011;Susilo, et al, 2010). As was already mentioned in the Introduction, previous studies found that CP individuals show impairment in deriving holistic face properties as evident in equal (Avidan, et al, 2011;Schmalzl, et al, 2008a), or even superior performance in some cases Schmalzl, et al, 2008a) for inverted compared to upright faces, in contrast to the typical advantage for upright faces exhibited by normal observers (Avidan, et al, 2011;Busigny, & Rossion, 2010;Farah, et al, 1995;Gauthier, Behrmann, & Tarr, 1999).…”

Movement cues aid face recognition in developmental prosopagnosia.

“…This lends support to the theory that neural processing of static and moving faces may dissociate (Pitcher et al, 2014), and at least some elements of facial biological motion perception (perhaps those that rely on separate processes from static faces) may be preserved in prosopagnosia (Lange et al, 2009). Consequently, facial motion may serve as an efficient supplementary strategy for some individuals with prosopagnosia.…”