ÝÝÝÝÝ ÝÝÝÝ Case StudiesÝÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ

ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ The first ever reported case of developmental prosopagnosia was found in a child at five years of age.Ý The child, TA, had prosopagnosia which prevented him from discriminating between faces.Ý The child came from an uncomplicated pregnancy and was of normal development.Ý The only difference was the child couldnít distinguish between his father and mother and strangers.Ý He did have however, a superior ability to read and his vocabulary came in rapid development.Ý He had no family history of any neurological or psychological problem and grew up in a normal two parent family.Ý As he was progressing through school the question was brought up where to place the child, he had difficulty finding his way around and was frequently lost.Ý He also was becoming frustrated at the slow pace of the rest of the students in the class as far as reading abilities were concerned.Ý TA was spotted asking strangers if they were his Mother, Friend or Teacher.Ý These problems brought attention to TA and soon it was discovered that he was unable to identify specific objects out of a category.ÝÝ When tested in the laboratory it was discovered that TA met or exceeded all of his peers at all tasks except for visual recognition.Ý He navigated the hospital using room numbers and distinguished between his doctors by reading their name tags.Ý Although TA claimed that a picture of himself was his brother, skin conductance tests showed that TA had covert recognition for familiar faces. (Jones 2001)

ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ Another case of prosopagnosia was spotted in KD, a fourteen month old girl.Ý It was at this young age that KD was found to be unable to discriminate her own face, as well as her parents, from other strangers.Ý After conducting tests it was found that KD could match faces by looking at each feature individually.Ý This was a way for KD to cope with her problem.Ý KDís specific prosopagnosia allowed her to understand expression, a trait commonly lost with those suffering from it.Ý Besides that she faced problems with the identification of familiar faces as well as the ability to determine someoneís age or gender by visual clues alone.Ý She did compensate by using other outside stimuli.Ý After formal tests it was concluded that KD had co-morbid visual impairments, she also had problems with color vision and the discrimination of objects.Ý KD did learn how to read despite her problems.Ý It was determined that there were problems occurring at the level of most basic encoding processes in her brain for face and face recognition (see how this works).Ý This case study showed just how early face recognition develops and how soon prosopagnosia can become a problem. (Joy 2002)

ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ An ascribed case of prosopagnosia occurred in a two year old.Ý This child received a bilateral occipital infraction following a case of meningitis.Ý After the infraction occurred the child had difficulties identifying shapes and also had problems with her ability to view pictures.Ý She was unable to read because of the problem but could write and spell only phonetically.Ý Even though she could write she was unable to read her words back.Ý This case showed the first ties to adult ascribed prosopagnosia. (Joy 2002)

ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ The case of LG, a child with developmental agnosia and prosopagnosia, gave new ideas to the thought of rehabilitation.Ý LG was the product of a normal pregnancy and delivery like most developmental cases.Ý Just after birth the EEG patterns LG was giving were abnormal in both occipital lobes.Ý Despite this, LG had normal color vision and good literacy skills through out his life.Ý He also had superior verbal intellect.Ý The impairment LG faced was in the direction of real objects, objects such as photos were impaired when in their conventional and unusual forms.Ý He was also facing social problems with his inability to recall faces of those familiar to him as well as discriminating different genders and ages.Ý He could however, identify features when in isolation.Ý It was soon found the LG was naturally resolving his deficits.Ý His brain appeared to have plasticity of brain function.Ý The question still remains can our minds heal prosopagnosia? (Joy 2002)

ÝÝÝÝÝÝÝ A case study done by Gelder, Pourtois, Vroomen, and Bachoud-Levi (2000) showed that when hearing familiar voice expressions, the presence of corresponding facial expressions helped the subject (AD) recognize the voices.Ý AD was a 74-year old with bilateral lesions of the anteroinferior parts of the occipital lobe.Ý She was severely impaired in covert recognition of familiar faces and showed a complete loss of processing facial expressions in recognition.Ý So, the fact that the facial expressions helped her distinguish voices suggests that even though the expressions were not recognized, they were still processed somehow and helped to identify voices, which will in turn help to identify faces.Ý Also, the paradigm they used in the study is suggested to be a useful tool in finding remaining covert face processing in prosopagnosic patients.

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