Perception des visages et reconnaissance de la physionomie dans l'agnosie des visages

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Abstract
Summary : Face perception and physionomy recognition in agnosia for faces. Agnosia for faces (prosopagnosia) is observed, although very rarely, in certain brain-damaged patients : they cannot recognize the faces of even familiar persons. Several theorists believe that the disorder is restricted to faces, and emphasize the dissociation of this stimulus and other visual stimuli. This dissociation led to the hypothesis that face-specific mechanisms exist. According to other investigators the essence of the defect lies in the failure to evoke the familiar character of the stimulus and to recognize individuality within a class when objects (faces,places, cars, belongings...) are visually apprehended. This article reviews current papers in clinical neuropsychology that deal with experiments carried out either on groups of brain-damaged patients or on prosopagnosic patients. The mechanisms of prosopagnosia remain a puzzling problem but the investigations of this disorder could reveal dissociations which may be important in the construction of models of information processing and of access to internal representations (categorization and individualization, extraction of local features and perception of physionomy-gestalt, apprehension of novelty and familiarity). Key words : Neuropsychology, agnosia for faces, face recognition, visuo-cognitive processing, visuo-imaged representation.

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