Speaker/Affiliation: Ken Nakayama Ph.D. Professo

r Harvard University Department of Psychology

When/Location: 10/23

/2006 12:00 PM SEA 4.244

Title of Talk: Normal and abnormal face p

rocessing

Reception with Refreshments at 11:30 AM

Abstract: E

mploying psychophysical methods we show that normal face processing requir

es the encoding of fine details of the face is insensitive to metrical dis

tortions in the image and linearly summates information over the whole face

. MEG adaptation studies suggest an early stage of face detection where fa

ce parts are important. Additional information about face specific process

ing comes from studies of developmental prosopagnosia (DP). These individua

ls have no history of brain injury but can have selective deficits in face

identification. DP is much more common than has been previously assumed. Tw

o independent estimates suggest a prevalence of %7E2%. The high prevalence
of prosopagnosia within families indicates a genetic component.