FACIAL RECOGNITION 1990

A review of recent studies of prosopagnosia suggests that the weight of evidence has shifted in favor of regarding it as a disability that can be produced by a right hemisphere lesion alone even though bilateral disease remains the more frequent anatomical basis. It is possible that prosopagnosia resulting from a right hemisphere lesion occurs only within the context of some atypical condition of the left hemisphere. "Types" of prosopagnosia continue to be postulated and the "identification of individuality" hypothesis continues to be advanced. Autonomic and covert recognition studies of prosopagnosic patients have described a new dimension in facial identification. Right hemisphere dominance for the discrimination of unfamiliar faces in non-aphasic patients has been confirmed but the performances of left-hemisphere damaged asphasic patients has still not been fully investigated. New developments include the study of developmental prosopagnosia and novel applications of test of facial discrimination.