Autonomic recognition of names and faces in prosopagnosia: A neuropsychological application of the guilty knowledge test

doi:10.1016/0028-3932(84)90040-X

Neuropsychologia

Volume 22, Issue 4, 1984, Pages 457-469

https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(84)90040-X Get rights and content

Abstract

A prosopagnosic was shown two sets of faces, one comprised of famous personalities, the other of family members. After he was allowed to visually inspect each face, he was given five names, one of which was correct. Skin conductance was continuously recorded. He could not identify any of the faces spontaneously, and performed at chance level when given multiple choice names. However, electrodermal responses indicated far more accurate discrimination between correct and incorrect names, suggesting that the patient “recognized” facial identity at the psychophysiological level. Neuropsychological mechanisms for this phenomenon, which in this case involve multiple visual-limbic interrelationships, are postulated. The method appears useful for studying islands of spared recognition ability in associative agnosia.

References (86)

M.H. Bagshaw et al.
Multiple measures of the orienting reaction and their dissociation after amygdalectomy in monkeys
Exp. Neurol.
(1968)
M.H. Bagshaw et al.
The GSR of monkeys during orienting and habituation after ablation of the amygdala, hippocampus, and inferotemporal cortex
Neuropsychologia
(1965)
A. Benton et al.
Prosopagnosia and facial discrimination
J. Neurol. Sci.
(1972)
G.J. Bradshaw et al.
Lexical discrimination and letter string identification in the two visual fields
Brain Lang.
(1979)
F.K. Graham
Habituation and dishabituation of responses innervated by the autonomic nervous system
K.M. Heilman et al.
Hypoarousal in patients with the neglect syndrome and emotional indifference
Neurology (Minneap.)
(1978)
B. Milner
Visual recognition and recall after right temporal-lobe excision in man
Neuropsychologia
(1968)
M. Mishkin
Visual mechanism beyond the striate cortex
E.D. Ross
Sensory-specific and functional disorders of recent memory in man. I. Isolated loss of visual recent memory
Archs Neurol.
(1980)
W.F. Waters et al.
Maintenance and habituation of the phasic orienting response to competing stimuli in selective attention

J.K. Adams

Laboratory studies of behavior without awareness

Psychol. Bull.

(1957)

K. Akert et al.

Kluver-Bucy Syndrome in monkeys with neocortical ablations of the temporal lobe

Brain

(1961)

M.L. Albert et al.

The anatomic basis of visual agnosia

Neurology

(1979)

D.A. Allport et al.

On the division of attention: A disproof of the single-channel hypothesis

Q. J. exp. Psychol.

(1972)

L.E. Baker

The pupillary response conditioned to subliminal auditory stimuli

Psychol. Monogr.

(1938)

C. Baleydier et al.

The duality of the cingulate gyrus in monkeys. Neuroanatomic study and functional hypothesis

Brain

(1980)

R.M. Bauer

Visual hypoemotionality as a symptom of visual-limbic disconnection in man

Archs Neurol.

(1982)

Bauer, R.M. and Rubens, A.B. Agnosia. In Clinical Neuropsychology. K.M. Heilman and E. Valenstein (Editors). Oxford...

Bauer, R.M. and Trobe, J.D. Visual memory and perceptual impairments in prosopagnosia. Archs Neuro ophthalmol. In...

Bauer, R.M., Mahoney, M.J. and Ray, W.J. Self-deception, self-description, and multiple cognitive control. Cognit....

D.M. Bear

Hemispheric specialization and the neurology of emotion

Archs Neurol.

(1983)

D.F. Benson et al.

Visual agnosia-prosopagnosia: a clinicopathological correlation

Archs Neurol.

(1974)

A.L. Benton et al.

Test of Facial Recognition

D.E. Broadbent

The hidden preattentive processes

Am. Psychol.

(1977)

R. Cole et al.

Prosopagnosia

Neuropsychologia

(1964)

R. Cohn et al.

Prosopagnosia: a clinicopathological study

Ann. Neurol.

(1977)

R.S. Corteen et al.

Autonomic responses to shock-associated words in an unattended channel

J. exp. Psychol.

(1972)

A.R. Damasio et al.

Prosopagnosia: anatomic basis and behavioral mechanisms

Neurology

(1982)

P.O. Davidson

Validity of the guilty knowledge technique: the effects of motivation

J. appl. Psychol.

(1968)

R.C. Davis

Motor responses to auditory stimuli above and below threshold

J. exp. Psychol.

(1950)

P. Dean

Effects of inferotemporal lesions on the behavior of monkeys

Psychol. Bull.

(1976)

M.H. Erdelyi

A new look at the New Look: perceptual defense and vigilance

Psychol. Rev.

(1974)

C.W. Eriksen

Discrimination and learning without awareness: a methodological survey and evaluation

Psychol. Rev.

(1960)

N. Geschwind

Disconnexion syndromes in animals and man

Brain

(1965)

N. Geschwind

Disconnexion syndromes in animals and man

Brain

(1965)

I. Gloning et al.

A case of prosopagnosia with necropsy findings

Neuropsychologia

(1970)

C.G. Gross et al.

Activity of inferior temporal neurons in behaving monkeys

Neuropsychologia

(1979)

J.A. Horel et al.

Recovery from a partial Kluver-Bucy syndrome in the monkey produced by disconnection

J. comp. Physiol. Psychol.

(1972)

C.W. Huntley

Judgements of self based upon records of expressive behavior

J. abnorm. soc. Psychol.

(1940)

N.W. Ingling

Categorization: a mechanism for rapid information processing

J. exp. Psychol.

(1972)

G. Jones et al.

Limbic lesions and the problem of stimulus-reinforcement association

Exp. Neurol.

(1972)

E.G. Jones et al.

An anatomic study of converging sensory pathways within the cerebral cortex of the monkey

Brain

(1970)

R.T. Kellogg

When can we introspective accurately about mental processes?

Mem. Cognit.

(1982)

R.T. Kellogg

Is conscious attention necessary for long-term storage?

J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perf.

(1980)

Cited by (441)

Conditioning to true content and artificial intelligence in psychophysiological intention recognition
2024, International Journal of Psychophysiology
The objective is to introduce a novel method for classical conditioning to true content (CtTC), and for the first time, apply this approach in the concealed information test (CIT) to effectively discern intentions. During CtTC, participants are trained to exhibit electrodermal responses whenever they recognize true content on a screen. Additionally, the objective is to evaluate a novel CIT-dataset preprocessing algorithm, employed to enhance machine learning (ML) classification performance.
A total of 84 participants were evenly divided into four groups. Two groups of participants devised plans for stealing money from a supermarket, while the other two groups did not engage in any planning. One planning group and one non-planning group underwent CIT examination, while the remaining groups were subjected to CtTC.
The CIT accuracy initially stood at 52 % and increased to 71 % after Z-score and ML classification (McNemar test, p < 0.05). Conversely, the CtTC accuracy was 76 % and significantly improved to 93 % following Z-score and 95 % following ML classification (McNemar test, p < 0.05). In the best-performing classifiers, CtTC exhibited significantly superior metrics for guilty/innocent classification compared to CIT (Fisher's exact test, p < 0.05, power 1 − β > 0.90). In the CtTC group, reactivity and sensitivity significantly increased, indicated by higher EDR amplitudes (p < 0.05, two-tailed t-test, power 1 − β = 0.89) and the number of EDRs (p < 0.05, Fisher's exact test, power 1 − β = 0.90). There was no statistically significant difference between the Z-score and ML classification.
In the assessment of intentions, CtTC enhances both the sensitivity and accuracy of the CIT.
Word recall process and physiological activation in the tip-of-the-tongue state: Comparison of young and middle-aged groups
2022, Consciousness and Cognition
Citation Excerpt :
These results are due to the lower likelihood of successful recall by name retrieval, making retrieval less likely to occur for NKP. This result partially supports the findings of many previous reports of lower SCR in unknown faces (e.g., Bauer, 1984; Ellis et al., 1999). The second stage, NKN, is a state in which the face is known, but the name is perceived as unknown.
To clarify the feeling of knowing a name but not being able to recall it, known as having a “tip-of-the-tongue” (TOT) experience, we proposed a TOT model consisting of three stages combining a face recognition model and autonomic sympathetic nerve activity. Since TOT increases with age, we compared two age groups: young (N = 27, M = 20.4 ± 1.5 years) and middle-aged (N = 29, M = 58.5 ± 8.0 years). Experiment 1 showed that successfully naming low-frequency common names increased the skin conductance response (SCR) value, and the time to reach the maximum SCR value was longer. Experiment 2 was a naming task for face photographs. The younger group showed higher SCR values during successfully naming, while the middle-aged group showed similar SCR values for successfully naming and experiencing TOT. Both groups had the longest time to reach maximum SCR in TOT. In this study, physiological arousal of TOT was not affected by aging.
Evidence for a Third Visual Pathway Specialized for Social Perception
2021, Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Existing models propose that primate visual cortex is divided into two functionally distinct pathways. The ventral pathway computes the identity of an object; the dorsal pathway computes the location of an object, and the actions related to that object. Despite remaining influential, the two visual pathways model requires revision. Both human and non-human primate studies reveal the existence of a third visual pathway on the lateral brain surface. This third pathway projects from early visual cortex, via motion-selective areas, into the superior temporal sulcus (STS). Studies demonstrating that the STS computes the actions of moving faces and bodies (e.g., expressions, eye-gaze, audio-visual integration, intention, and mood) show that the third visual pathway is specialized for the dynamic aspects of social perception.
Prosopagnosia and disorders of face processing
2021, Handbook of Clinical Neurology
Face recognition is a form of expert visual processing. Acquired prosopagnosia is the loss of familiarity for facial identity and has several functional variants, namely apperceptive, amnestic, and associative forms. Acquired forms are usually caused by either occipitotemporal or anterior temporal lesions, right or bilateral in most cases. In addition, there is a developmental form, whose functional and structural origins are still being elucidated. Despite their difficulties with recognizing faces, some of these subjects still show signs of covert recognition, which may have a number of explanations. Other aspects of face perception can be spared in prosopagnosic subjects. Patients with other types of face processing difficulties have been described, including impaired expression processing, impaired lip-reading, false familiarity for faces, and a people-specific amnesia. Recent rehabilitative studies have shown some modest ability to improve face perception in prosopagnosic subjects through perceptual training protocols.
Catching the imposter in the brain: The case of Capgras delusion
2020, Cortex
Here we describe a rare case of Capgras delusion – a misidentification syndrome characterized by the belief that a person has been replaced by an imposter – in a patient without evident neurological or psychiatric symptoms. Intriguingly, delusional belief was selective for both person and modality, as the patient believed that his son – not his daughter or other relatives – was substituted with an imposter only while being in presence of him and looking at his face, but not when merely listening to his voice.
A neuroanatomical reconstruction obtained integrating morphological and functional patient's neuroimaging data highlighted two main peculiarities: a compression of the rostral portion of right temporal lobe due to a large arachnoid cyst, and a bilaterally reduced metabolism of frontal areas. Autonomic data obtained from thermal infra-red camera and skin conductance recordings showed that a higher sympathetic activation was evoked by the observation of daughter's face, relative to the observation of the son's face as well as of not-familiar faces; conversely, daughter and son voices elicited a similar sympathetic activation, higher relative to not-familiar voices, indicating a modality-dependent dissociation consistent with the delusional behavior.
Our case supports the “two-hit hypothesis” about Capgras delusion etiopathogenesis: here, the first hit is represented by the right-temporal lesion impairing the association between familiar faces and emotional values, the second one is the frontal bilateral hypometabolism favoring delusional behavior. The selective occurrence of “imposter” delusion for a particular subject and for a specific perceptual modality suggests the involvement of modality-specific interactions in the retrieval of affective properties during familiar people recognition.
Later but not early stages of familiar face recognition depend strongly on attentional resources: Evidence from event-related brain potentials
2019, Cortex
In everyday life we usually recognise personally familiar faces efficiently and without apparent effort. This study examined to which extent the neural processes involved in recognising personally familiar faces depend on attentional resources by analysing event-related brain potentials. In two experiments, participants were presented with multiple ambient images of highly personally familiar and unfamiliar faces and pictures of butterflies, with a letter string superimposed on each image. Their task was either to indicate when a butterfly occurred (effectively ignoring the letter strings) or to indicate whether each letter string contained the letter X or N. Attentional resource load was manipulated in the letter task by presenting the target among different distractor letters (high load; Experiment 1) or by using only a single repeated letter in each string (low load; Experiment 2). ERPs revealed more negative amplitudes for familiar relative to unfamiliar faces under both high and low load conditions, both in the N250, reflecting the activation of perceptual face representations, and in the subsequent Sustained Familiarity Effect (SFE). Nonetheless, while the magnitude of the N250 effect was not substantially affected by attentional load, the SFE was still present but reduced in the high relative to the low load experiment. These findings suggest that perceptual face representations are activated independent of the demands of a competing task. However, the subsequent SFE, presumably reflecting more sustained activation needed to access identity-specific knowledge that can guide potential interactions, strongly relies on the availability of attentional resources.

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text

Autonomic recognition of names and faces in prosopagnosia: A neuropsychological application of the guilty knowledge test

Abstract

Exp. Neurol.

Neuropsychologia

J. Neurol. Sci.

Brain Lang.

Neurology (Minneap.)

Neuropsychologia

Archs Neurol.

Laboratory studies of behavior without awareness

Psychol. Bull.

Kluver-Bucy Syndrome in monkeys with neocortical ablations of the temporal lobe

Brain

The anatomic basis of visual agnosia

Neurology

On the division of attention: A disproof of the single-channel hypothesis

Q. J. exp. Psychol.

The pupillary response conditioned to subliminal auditory stimuli

Psychol. Monogr.

The duality of the cingulate gyrus in monkeys. Neuroanatomic study and functional hypothesis

Brain

Visual hypoemotionality as a symptom of visual-limbic disconnection in man

Archs Neurol.

Hemispheric specialization and the neurology of emotion

Archs Neurol.

Visual agnosia-prosopagnosia: a clinicopathological correlation

Archs Neurol.

Test of Facial Recognition

The hidden preattentive processes

Am. Psychol.

Prosopagnosia

Neuropsychologia

Prosopagnosia: a clinicopathological study

Ann. Neurol.

Autonomic responses to shock-associated words in an unattended channel

J. exp. Psychol.

Prosopagnosia: anatomic basis and behavioral mechanisms

Neurology

Validity of the guilty knowledge technique: the effects of motivation

J. appl. Psychol.

Motor responses to auditory stimuli above and below threshold

J. exp. Psychol.

Effects of inferotemporal lesions on the behavior of monkeys

Psychol. Bull.

A new look at the New Look: perceptual defense and vigilance

Psychol. Rev.

Discrimination and learning without awareness: a methodological survey and evaluation

Psychol. Rev.

Disconnexion syndromes in animals and man

Brain

Disconnexion syndromes in animals and man

Brain

A case of prosopagnosia with necropsy findings

Neuropsychologia

Activity of inferior temporal neurons in behaving monkeys

Neuropsychologia

Recovery from a partial Kluver-Bucy syndrome in the monkey produced by disconnection

J. comp. Physiol. Psychol.

Judgements of self based upon records of expressive behavior

J. abnorm. soc. Psychol.

Categorization: a mechanism for rapid information processing

J. exp. Psychol.

Limbic lesions and the problem of stimulus-reinforcement association

Exp. Neurol.

An anatomic study of converging sensory pathways within the cerebral cortex of the monkey

Brain

When can we introspective accurately about mental processes?

Mem. Cognit.

Is conscious attention necessary for long-term storage?

J. exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perf.