Neuroanatomical correlates of the Benton Facial Recognition Test and Judgment of Line Orientation Test

Abstract

Two of the most successful and widely used tests developed by Arthur Benton and colleagues are the Facial Recognition Test (FRT) and Judgment of Line Orientation Test (JLO), which probe visuoperceptual and visuospatial functions typically associated with right hemisphere structures, especially parietal, occipitoparietal, and occipitotemporal structures. Taking advantage of a large database of focal lesion patients (the Iowa Neurological Patient Registry), we used a new lesion–deficit mapping technique to investigate the neuroanatomical correlates of FRT and JLO performance. For the FRT, there were 201 patients with relevant data; of these, 38 were impaired on the FRT, and failure was most strongly associated with lesions in the right posterior-inferior parietal and right ventral occipitotemporal (fusiform gyrus) areas. For the JLO, there were 181 patients with relevant data; of these, 23 were impaired on the JLO, and failure was most strongly associated with lesions in the right posterior parietal region. These findings put new empirical teeth in the localizing value of the FRT and JLO tests, and they extend and sharpen previous work that had pointed to right posterior structures as being important for FRT and JLO performance.

Keywords:

• Arthur Benton
• Visuospatial
• Visuoperceptual
• Lesion–deficit
• Right hemisphere

Supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) P01 NS19632 and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) R01 DA022549.

Notes

¹We acknowledge that patients can continue to show recovery after the first 3 months following lesion onset, in both neuroanatomical and neuropsychological status. However, such recovery tends to be modest, and we have found that the 3-month demarcation is satisfactory for separating the more rapid and substantial changes in the acute epoch from the slower and more modest changes in the chronic epoch.