NESBED Knowledge Clips Week 2

Knowledge Clips: Face and Body Recognition

1. Cognitive Model: Bruce & Young (1986) vs. Neurobiological Model: Haxby et al. (2000)
   - Two models for recognizing faces, emphasizing cognitive and neurobiological aspects.

2. Occipital Face Area (OFA):
   - Early perceptual analysis of faces.
   - Strong fMRI activity in response to faces, sensitive to physical changes (e.g., haircut, skin color).

3. Fusiform Face Area (FFA):
   - Recognizing known faces.
   - Strong fMRI activity in response to faces, sensitive to identity changes.

4. OFA vs. FFA:
   - OFA primarily active in physical change conditions.
   - FFA primarily active in identity change conditions.

5. Superior Temporal Sulcus:
   - Responds to changeable aspects of faces and bodies (e.g., eye gaze, motion).
   - Stronger fMRI response to eye gaze relative to person identity.

6. Body Recognition:
   - Importance of recognizing bodies for additional information beyond faces.
   - Distinct brain regions for body recognition: extrastriate body area, fusiform body area, superior temporal sulcus.

7. Processes in Face and Body Interpretation:
   - Three parallel routes for interpreting faces and bodies (Wood et al., 2016).
      - Unconscious linking of visual processing with emotional response.
      - Conscious inferring of emotional state based on prior experience.
      - Sensorimotor stimulation for empathy and understanding.

8. Emotion System:
   - Different emotions activate overlapping brain areas.
   - Amygdala and middle occipital gyrus activated in all emotions.

9. Emotional Body Language:
   - De Gelder's model highlighting rapid, unconscious perception and conscious, detailed perception of emotional body language.

10. Disorders of Face and Emotion Recognition:
   - Prosopagnosia (face blindness): Impaired face recognition without affecting object recognition.
   - Types: apperceptive (visual analysis deficit) and associative (linking face to identity impairment).
   - Causes: damage to core face recognition network or white matter pathways.

11. Person Recognition Disorders:
   - Inability to recognize familiar faces or use non-visual person-specific characteristics.
   - Affects semantic integration, linked to damage in anterior temporal lobe.

12. False Recognition Disorders:
   - Patients falsely recognize novel faces as familiar.
   - Overreliance on category representation, not considering identity-specific characteristics.
   - Linked to damage in prefrontal cortex.

13. Capgras Delusion:
   - Belief that familiar people have been replaced by body doubles.
   - Lack of emotional response despite correct visual recognition.
   - Linked to damage in bilateral frontal, right limbic, and temporal regions affecting memory and reality perception.