Face perception and prosopagnosia

Face recognition is a critical skill for our socialadaptation; disorders of face recognition can imposevery frustrating and embarrassing problems on theaffected person. Although face recognition is usuallyan automatic and effortless process for most of usit entails very complex neural computations most ofwhich are still beyond our knowledge. This bookpresents review of recent scientific findings on facerecognition and prosopagnosia (face-blindness) andpsychophysical studies that were conducted with humanobservers including individuals with prosopagnosia.These studies have investigated the manner in whichfaces are represented in the visual system underchanges in viewpoint and image size. Using uniquemethods including synthetic faces the present workhas extended the findings of previous studies andprovided insight into the neural mechanisms thatunderlie face processing and prosopagnosia. Facerecognition is a promising venue of scientific andclinical investigations and offers a wide range ofcommercial security and law enforcementapplications. The reader should be somewhat familiarwith psychophysical methods.