Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1525-0451

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis (Ph.D.)

Department or Program

Cognitive Neuroscience

First Advisor

Bradley Duchaine

Abstract

Human faces provide essential social cues that we interpret rapidly, allowing us to recognize identities, interpret emotions, and gauge familiarity. This thesis explores face processing disruptions in four case studies, each offering new insights into the brain’s face recognition mechanisms.

Chapter one presents Annie, a 28-year-old woman who acquired prosopagnosia (face blindness) following COVID-19. After recovering from the severe symptoms of the infection, Annie experienced significant difficulty in recognizing familiar faces and navigating familiar environments. Testing confirmed her impairment in face recognition but showed her preserved cognitive and basic visual processing abilities. Annie was still able to recognize objects and scenes, pointing to a selective impact on face processing. A survey of individuals with long COVID revealed deficits with visual processing, highlighting a need for further exploration of long COVID’s cognitive and perceptual effects.

Chapter two thoroughly explores face processing abilities in two participants, Alma-Jean and Rose, who acquired prosopagnosia due to extensive damage to their right temporal lobes. Both participants exhibited severe impairments in face identity recognition while retaining the ability to recognize facial expressions, suggesting a dissociation between identity and expression processing. Alma-Jean also displayed intact facial sex recognition. Our findings provide evidence for separate processing pathways for facial identity and expression, as well as facial identity and sex.

Chapter three describes Nell who developed hyperfamiliarity for faces after a severe migraine. Nell experiences false feelings of familiarity with unfamiliar faces, names, and some object categories while retaining accuracy in recognizing actually familiar faces, names, and objects. Her prolonged response times on face tests suggest disruptions in familiarity mechanisms that interfere with processing efficiency.

Together, these cases reveal how distinct disruptions in face processing can stem from varied etiologies and increase our understanding of mechanisms underlying the complex neural systems that support social cognition and recognition.

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