Inversion superiority in visual agnosia may be common to a variety of orientation polarised objects besides faces

Selective impairment in recognition of faces (prosopagnosia) resulting from certain localized cortical lesions has been advanced as an argument for a face specific brain module. The argument is claimed to be strengthened by the discovery of an inversion superiority effect in the recognition of faces by a prosopagnosic patient(Farah et al., Vis Res 1995b;35:2089-2093). The present paper reports an inversion superiority effect in the recognition of faces and shoes in a visual agnosic patient. The finding raises the possibility that several classes of orientationally polarized objects, of which shoes and faces are examples, will exhibit inversion superiority. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.