Category specificity in the brain?

INTRODUCTIONCategory-specific deficits:

Category-specific (associative) agnosiaProsopagnosia

Word blindness

Category specific aphasiaNaming

Acquired prosopagnosia as a face-specific disorder: Ruling out the general visual similarity account

(patient PS)Busigny T., Graf, M., Mayer,

Bruno Rossion

Neuropsychologia 48 (2010) 2051–2067

Discrimination between novel 3D geonlike shapes

Discrimination between living and nonliving objects

Discriminating between similar cars

Discrimination between faces

Categorical specificity in perception?

Modularity and categorical specialization in high-level visual areas.

Keren

Vicki

What does categorical specificity in the extrastriate area tells us about categorical specific impairments?

Developmental Prosopagnosia

Selective visual streaming in face recognition: Evidence from

developmental prosopagnosia(Case YT)

Shlomo Bentin, Leon Y. Deouell

and Nachum Soroker

NeuroReport 10, (1999) 823-827

YT – Neuropsychological profile

• Benton's Visual Retention: • Copy: 10/10• Immediate memory 10/10

• Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure:• Copy: 36/36• 5 minutes delay: 27/36

• Boston Naming Test: • 50/50• Judgement of Line Orientation: • 30/30

• Color Identification: • 20/20

• WAIS-R• Verbal: 127• Performance: 113• Full Scale: 124

• WMS-R• Verbal memory: 123• Visual memory: 121• General memory: 127

• Western Aphasia Battery (Apraxia subtest): • 20/20

YT – Neuropsychological profile - 2

• Behavioral Inattention Test for Visual Neglect:• Line Crossing: 36/36• Letter cancellation: 40/40• Star Cancellation: 54/54• Figure & Shape copy: 4/4• Line Bisection: 9/9• Representational Drawing: 3/3• Total score: 146/146• Facial Recognition Test • 41/54 (40=borderline)

• Warrington's Visual Memory Test:

• Recall of words: 48/50• Recall of faces: 32/50

YT has a normally discriminative FFA

N170 is not discriminative in YT

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Too Many Trees to See the Forest: Performance, Event-related Potential, and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Manifestations of Integrative

Congenital Prosopagnosia(Case KW)

Shlomo Bentin, Joseph M. DeGutis, Mark D’Esposito,

and Lynn C. Robertson

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19, (2007), 132–146

KW – Neuropsychological profile

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Visual acuity as measured by Snellen chart at 35 cm (OD 20/20, OS, 20/25)

Color vision as measured by Dvorine Color Plates (14/14).

Object recognition, on the Boston Naming Test (BNT) (60/60)

Hooper test 28/30 (normal mean 26.75 SD=1.97)

Identification of famous movie stars and politicians 10/60 (controls 39/60)

Cambridge Face Memory Test 39/75 (controls 59/75)

Warrington Word/Face Memory test: Words: 50/50Faces : 23/50

Benton Face Recognition Test: 33/54 Severely impaired

KW – No face selectivity in extrastriate cortex

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KWA

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Objects - places

Faces - placesControl SubjectsFaces vs. places

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KW – Impaired global processing

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Incongruent Congruent

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No global-to-local interference

Augmented local-to-global interference

KW – N170 effects: special sensitivity to features

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Inner Components effect

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Functional Plasticity in Ventral Temporal Cortex following Cognitive Rehabilitation of

a Congenital Prosopagnosic(Case MZ)

Joseph M. DeGutis, Shlomo Bentin, Lynn C. Robertson,

and Mark D’Esposito

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19, (2007), 1790–1802

MZ – normal FFA selectivity

MZ: Faces > Scenes

MZ – Training effects on performance

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Before Training After TrainingA. B.

MZ – N170 selectivity before and after training

N170

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milliseconds milliseconds

FacesWatches

N170 effect

Perception or semantic knowledge?

Living non-living distinctions in perception and naming.

The Sensory/Functional Theory

Adi

Domain-specific organization of conceptual knowledge in the brain – The ontogenetic theory

THE END