Farah, Martha J.; Rabinowitz, Carol; Quinn, Graham E.; Liu, Grant T.
Early commitment of neural substrates for face recognition
Cognitive Neuropsychology 17. 1-3 (Feb-May 2000): 117-123

Abstract

Examined a failure of plasticity in the neural substrates of face recognition, which suggests that the distinction between faces and other objects, and the localization of faces relative to other objects, is fully determined prior to any postnatal experience. A case study of a 16-yr-old boy who sustained brain damage at 1 day of age displaying the classic lesions and behavioral profile of adult-acquired prosopagnosia is discussed. He has profoundly impaired face recognition, whereas his recognition of objects is much less impaired. The authors suggest that the human genome contains sufficiently explicit information about faces and nonface objects, or visual features by which they can be distinguished, that experience with these categories is not necessary for their functional delineation and differential brain localization.

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