Neural Correlates of Face Processing in Hereditary Prosopagnosia: A Functional MRI Study

For a long time, congenital prosopagnosia has been described as a low incidence anecdotic entity. Only very recently epidemiologic and genetic studies have indicated that its prevalence may in fact amount to 2% of the population, and an autosomal-dominant inheritance pattern was proposed. In neuropsychological terms, hereditary prosopagnosia is not part of a general visual agnosia but may extend to certain deficits in recognition of other, similarly complex visual stimuli. Here we performed a functional MRI study on a group of 18 hereditary prosopagnosics as compared to 18 matched controls. Neutral and emotional…