Word recognition and face recognition following posterior cerebral artery stroke: Overlapping networks and selective contributions

ABSTRACT

It has been suggested that word- and face recognition rely on a common cerebral network for perceptual processing. To further explore this hypothesis, face- and word recognition were assessed in seven patients with focal lesions after stroke of the posterior cerebral artery in either hemisphere. The aim was to investigate if problems in face- and word recognition would co-occur, if testing was sensitive and patients were not pre-selected based on behavioural symptoms. Patients and matched controls were given a reading test and a delayed matching paradigm with faces, objects, and words. Interestingly, all patients with word recognition difficulties had problems in face recognition, independently of the affected hemisphere, supporting the existence of a bilateral perceptual network for faces and words. However, two patients showed selective face recognition problems after unilateral damage to either hemisphere, suggesting that parts of this network may be more critical for face than for word recognition.

KEYWORDS:

• Face recognition
• prosopagnosia
• pure alexia
• word recognition

Acknowledgements

We thank the participating patients, and the Friends of Fakutsi Association (FFA). Thanks to Helle K. Iversen for help with patient recruitment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Christina D. Kühn http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9225-6083

Christian Gerlach http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1261-4889

Randi Starrfelt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5849-5160

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by a grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research (Sapere Aude) to RS (grant number 11-115958).