What have studies of visual object agnosia and prosopagnosia contributed to our understanding of visual recognition?
A lot of what we understand about visual recognition comes from investigating cases where the processes involved go wrong. The absence of a cognitive ability can provide is with the ability to look at where things differ in these individuals from those with normal levels of processing. In the case of visual recognition, we can look at different forms of visual agnosias in order to tell us about how these recognition processes work, as well as whether there are specific brain areas where it occurs. Visual object agnosia refers to a deficit in one’s ability to recognise visually presented objects, regardless of whether they are familiar or novel. Prosopagnosia is similar, however refers to the deficit in ones ability to recognise faces, including those of very familiar individuals such as spouses, family members and famous celebrities. Both of these impairments cannot be explained by deficits in visual acuity, language skills, memory …show more content…
With patient Herschel, he had deficits in both the recognition of faces and the learning of new novel faces. Due to the high specificity to faces in this case, it can be inferred that the areas of the brain where he has suffered damage are involved specifically in face recognition as he had normal memory performance and normal recognition of other types of stimuli. Areas of reduced brain activity in patient Herschel included the right fusiform face area (rFFA), the right occipital face area (rOFA) and right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS). Therefore the case of this prosopagnosic patient suggest that the visual processing of faces is carried out, at least to some extent in these areas. It is suggestive of an area of the brain specific to the visual recognition of
A lot of what we understand about visual recognition comes from investigating cases where the processes involved go wrong. The absence of a cognitive ability can provide is with the ability to look at where things differ in these individuals from those with normal levels of processing. In the case of visual recognition, we can look at different forms of visual agnosias in order to tell us about how these recognition processes work, as well as whether there are specific brain areas where it occurs. Visual object agnosia refers to a deficit in one’s ability to recognise visually presented objects, regardless of whether they are familiar or novel. Prosopagnosia is similar, however refers to the deficit in ones ability to recognise faces, including those of very familiar individuals such as spouses, family members and famous celebrities. Both of these impairments cannot be explained by deficits in visual acuity, language skills, memory …show more content…
With patient Herschel, he had deficits in both the recognition of faces and the learning of new novel faces. Due to the high specificity to faces in this case, it can be inferred that the areas of the brain where he has suffered damage are involved specifically in face recognition as he had normal memory performance and normal recognition of other types of stimuli. Areas of reduced brain activity in patient Herschel included the right fusiform face area (rFFA), the right occipital face area (rOFA) and right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS). Therefore the case of this prosopagnosic patient suggest that the visual processing of faces is carried out, at least to some extent in these areas. It is suggestive of an area of the brain specific to the visual recognition of