Faces and Non-Faces in Prosopagnosic Patients

Abstract

The manifestations of the prosopagnosia syndrome are often used as arguments in favour of the existence of a face-specific processing system in the brain. This syndrome is indeed sometimes considered as visual agnosia restricted to faces, or the inability to process human faces. This view, which isolates faces from other objects of the visual environment was very attractive; nevertheless, no argument appeared very convincing; above all, no clear definition was given and, as stressed by Hay and Young (1982), several meanings are in fact used. Recent data and some speculations invite us to examine the findings more carefully, in order to clarify the concepts (see in particular, Benton, 1980 and Damasio, 1985).