Face perception and prosopagnosia

Face recognition is a critical skill for our social§adaptation; disorders of face recognition can impose§very frustrating and embarrassing problems on the§affected person. Although face recognition is usually§an automatic and effortless process for most of us,§it entails very complex neural computations, most of§which are still beyond our knowledge. This book§presents review of recent scientific findings on face§recognition and prosopagnosia (face-blindness) and§psychophysical studies that were conducted with human§observers including individuals with prosopagnosia.§These studies have investigated the manner in which§faces are represented in the visual system under§changes in viewpoint and image size. Using unique§methods including synthetic faces, the present work§has extended the findings of previous studies and§provided insight into the neural mechanisms that§underlie face processing and prosopagnosia. Face§recognition is a promising venue of scientific and§clinical investigations and offers a wide range of§commercial, security and law enforcement§applications. The reader should be somewhat familiar§with psychophysical methods.