Prosopagnosia

The clinical symptom of an inability to recognize familiar faces is called “prosopagnosia”. It is a modality-specific visual impairment, and other visual recognition abilities such as reading and object recognition may remain unaffected. The deficit cannot be explained by perceptual, language or amnestic deficits, or by general confusion. Face processing itself fractionates further into subprocesses responsible for familiar face recognition, expression analysis, face perception skills (eg, gender and age estimation), and perhaps lip reading. These processes are subserved by a network involving the fusiform gyrus, the lateral occipital area, and medial temporal lobe.