R.P.

, a Typical
Case of
Prosopagnosia
 R.P., A Typical Case of
Prosopagnosia
R.P. is a typical propagnosic. With
routine testing, he displayed a severe deficit
in recognizing faces and indentifying facial
expressions but no other recognition
problems.

If testing, had stopped there, it would

have been concluded that R.P. is agnosic
with recognition problems specific to human
faces.
 R.P., A Typical Case of
Prosopagnosia
However, more thorough
testing suggested that R.P. is
deficient in recognizing all objects
with complex curved surfaces, not
just faces.

Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All

rights reserved.
 Prosopagnosia
Agnosia a failure of recognition that is
not attributable to a sensory deficit or to
verbal or intellectual impairment.

Visual agnosia a specific agnosia for

visual stimuli.
Visual agnosics can see a visual stimuli
but they dont know what they are.
 Prosopagnosia
Visual agnosias themselves are often
specific to a particular aspect of visual
input and are named accordingly:
Movement agnosia, object agnosia and
color agnosia
It is presumed that each specific visual
agnosia results from damage to an area of
secondary visual cortex that mediates the
recognition of that particular attribute.
 Prosopagnosia
Prosopagnosia visual agnosia for
faces.
Prosopagnosics can usually recognize a face
as a face, but they have problems recognizing
whose face it is.
They often report seeing a jumble of individual
facial parts that for some reason are never fused
or bound into an easy-to-recognize whole.
In extreme cases, they cannot recognize
themselves.
 What Brain Pathology Is
Associated with Prosopagnosia?
The diagnosis of prosopagnosia is
often associated with damage to the
ventral stream in the area of the
boundary between the occipital and
temporal lobe.
This area of human cortex has

become known as the FUSIFORM FACE

AREA, and parts of it are selectively
activated by human faces.
Can Prosopagnosics Perceive Faces
in the Absence of Conscious
Awareness?
TRANEL AND DAMASIO (1985) were
the first to demonstrate that
prosopagnosics can recognize faces in
the absence of conscious
awareness.
They presented a series of
photographs to several patients, some
familiar to the patients, some not.
The subjects claimed not to
recognize any of the faces
.However, when familiar faces were
presented, the subjects displayed a
large skin conductance response,
which did not occur with unfamiliar
faces.
Thus, indicating that the faces were

being unconsciously recognized by

undamaged portions of the brain.