Affiliations: Department of Neurophysiology, University of Louvain,
Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium | Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Maastricht
University, Maastricht, The Netherlands | Maastricht Brain Imaging Center (M-BIC), Maastricht,
The Netherlands | Department of Cognitive Development, University of
Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Note: [] Corresponding author: Bruno Rossion, Department of Cognitive
Development, Faculty of Psychology, University of Louvain, 10, Place Cardinal
Mercier, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Tel.: +32 10 47 87 88; Fax: +32 10 47
37 74; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Two areas in the human occipito-temporal cortex respond
preferentially to faces: 'the fusiform face area' ('FFA') and the `occipital
face area' ('OFA'). However, it is unclear whether these areas have an
exclusive role in processing faces, or if sub-maximal responses in other visual
areas such as the lateral occipital complex (LOC) are also involved. To clarify
this issue, we tested a brain-damaged patient (PS) presenting a face-selective
impairment with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The right
hemisphere lesion of the prosoagnosic patient encompasses the 'OFA' but
preserves the 'FFA' and LOC [14,16]. Using fMRI-adaptation, we found a
larger response to different faces than repeated faces in the ventral part of
the LOC both for normals and the patient, next to her right hemisphere lesion.
This observation indicates that following prosopagnosia, areas that do not
respond preferentially to faces such as the ventral part of the LOC (vLOC) may
still be recruited to subtend residual perception of individual faces.
