Dr. Brad Duchaine
Because the perceptual and neural basis of face processing is relatively well understood, face processing provides a model to explore fundamental issues in cognitive neuroscience. Over the last few years, my laboratory has used developmental prosopagnosia, acquired prosopagnosia, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to shed light on the mechanisms involved in face processing. In my talk, I'll discuss four sets of experiments investigating the organization of face processing and visual recognition more generally: 1) A case study of a developmental prosopagnosic indicating that face processing involves face-specific mechanisms. 2) A TMS study indicating that fMRI-defined category-selective areas for faces, objects, and bodies contribute only to the recognition of their preferred category. 3) A case study of an acquired prosopagnosic with severe deficits with facial identity perception coupled with normal facial expression perception. 4) A TMS study showing that the right occipital face area and the face area of the right somatosensory cortex make sequential contributions to facial expression discrimination.
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