Week 2: The constructive interaction between academic neuroscience and clinical observations (2)

Question 1

What is important about the FFA with regards to how it responds?

Answer 1

Category-selective MODULE in the brain

Responds more strongly to facial stimuli than non-facial control stimuli

Question 2

(Gauthier et al., 1999) - expertise and the FFA?

Answer 2

FFA not per se specialised for processing of faces but is specialised for making the discrimination when substantial EXPERTISE is gained (we know the face well)

Question 3

Kanwisher et al., 1997) - strength of response of FFA?

Answer 3

Responds more strongly to faces than objects

Question 4

Spiridon & Kanwisher, 2002) quality of response of FFA?

Answer 4

Responds more strongly to schematic or cartoon faces than other objects

Question 5

What is the PPA? (Octaven and Kanwisher, 2000)

Answer 5

Parahippocampal place area - also active when we IMAGINE a face or place (Octaven and Kanwisher, 2000)

Question 6

General vs specific domain for faces?

Answer 6

‘Domain general hypothesis’ - FFA involved in processing of different categories of objects according to the expertise of the participant (the variability of participants’ experience with familiar objects contributes to ability to recognise)

Question 7

Gauthies et al., 2000?

Answer 7

Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in facial recognition

Question 8

Gauthier et al., 1999?

Answer 8

Expertise with unfamiliar objects recruits face selective areas in the FFA and OFA
Encountering person who is expert in birdwatching and has lesion in the FFA – may impair ability to recognise birds and faces?

Question 9

Scherf et al., 2010?

Answer 9

Younger participants less likely to have face/place selectivity in the FFA and PPA - contradicts evidence to show that facial recognition is INNATE

Question 10

What is the Capgras Delusion? Cause?

Answer 10

• belief that significant others replaced by lookalikes/imposters/robots/aliens
• result of injury / psychiatric illness / other disorders

Question 11

Characteristics of capgras delusion?

Answer 11

• An absence of covert recognition (cognitive or behavioural facial recognition)
• Patients do NOT show differential autonomic activity in the brain with FAMILIAR and UNKNOWN faces!
• Also comorbid with belief that objects have been replaced by REPLICAS - domain specificity

Question 12

What does Capgras Delusion imply about functional modularity of brain?

Answer 12

Implies that recognising person and recognising the EMOTIONAL ACTIVATION associated with that person has 2 DIFFERENT FUNCTIONAL MODULES - an interruption of the covert route for facial recognition

Question 13

Overt and covert pathway - explanation for capgras delusion?

Answer 13

‘AN absence of the confirmatory input from systems underlying covert recognition of faces, whereby the input patients receives from the brain tells them that the face in front of them BELONGS to X but they do not receive covert confirmation of this’ – hence they see an imposter

Question 14

(Bauer, 1984) - routes in the brain

Answer 14

Ventral and dorsal routes are for IDENTIFICATION and DETECTION OF SIGNIFICANCE of face respectively

Question 15

Componants of facial recognition model (Bruce and Young, 1986)

Answer 15

FRU -facial recognition unit - activated when a familiar face is encountered
PIN - person identity node - multi-modal gateway linking info from different domains about the same person
SIU - semantic info unit - store of attributes that are potentially known about a given person