Developmental prosopagnosia with concurrent topographical difficulties: A case report and virtual reality training programme

Abstract

Several neuropsychological case studies report brain-damaged individuals with concurrent impairments in face recognition (i.e., prosopagnosia) and topographical orientation. Recently, individuals with a developmental form of topographical disorientation have also been described, and several case reports of individuals with developmental prosopagnosia provide anecdotal evidence of concurrent navigational difficulties. Clearly, the co-occurrence of these difficulties can exacerbate the negative psychosocial consequences associated with each condition. This paper presents the first detailed case report of an individual (FN) with developmental prosopagnosia alongside difficulties in topographical orientation. FN's performance on an extensive navigational battery indicated that she primarily has difficulties in the formation and retrieval of cognitive maps. We then evaluated the effectiveness of a short-term virtual reality training programme and found that she is able to form a cognitive map of a particular environment following intense overlearning. Surprisingly, FN's performance on a face recognition task also improved following training. While the latter finding was unexpected and requires further exploration, the training programme reported here may help to alleviate some of the compounded negative psychosocial consequences that are associated with difficulties in finding both locations and people.

The domain-specificity of face matching impairments in 40 cases of developmental prosopagnosia

“…All had contacted our laboratory complaining of severe everyday difficulties with face recognition: these were confirmed via diagnostic protocols that are adhered to by most laboratories in the field (see Dalrymple & Palermo, 2016;Murray, Hills, Bennetts, & Bate, 2018). In brief, all individuals performed significantly below published age-matched control cut-offs on the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT; Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006; for cut-offs see Bowles et al, 2009) and a famous faces test (Bate, Adams, Bennetts, & Line, 2019). Each case's scores on these tests are presented as supplementary information (see SM1), in addition to individual scores on the upright trials of the Cambridge Face Perception Test (CFPT; Duchaine et al, 2007).…”

Diagnosing developmental prosopagnosia: repeat assessment using the Cambridge Face Memory Test

“…Over the past 20 years, research into DP has surged, and individuals with the condition have been used to make theoretical inferences about the development and functioning of the cognitive and neural architecture of the face recognition system (e.g. [ 5 – 9 ]). Given that these theoretical inferences rely on accurate identification of people with DP, and that some individuals also report moderate-to-severe psychosocial consequences of the condition [ 10 – 13 ], existing diagnostic protocols are under increasing scrutiny.…”

Neurorehabilitation of Spatial Memory Using Virtual Environments: A Systematic Review

“…In [50] the rehabilitation training was based on a navigational task, exploring part of a virtual town (London) from a ground-level perspective, using a computer videogame driving simulator (Midtown Madness 2, Microsoft Game Studios). Other studies have used nonimmersive VR training on a computer with joystick or keypad to navigate the city, using Unity 3D software—Reh@city [54,56]—on a standard IBM-PC computer and in an environment developed with the Super Scape VRT-3D construction package [49]; or a specific software developed by authors—Virtual Tübingen [53]. Other studies used Superscape software version 4 and NeuroVR.…”

“…All of the mentioned studies had a control group [20,21,48,49,51,52,54,57,59,61] except one [53]. Five of them reported results of single case studies [50,55,56,58,60]. Virtual rehabilitation enables clinicians to control the specific features of the virtual environment, enabling tailoring of the challenge to suit individual patient needs [65].…”

“…Interesting results are also connected with high frequency and intensity of sessions [21,50,52,55,58,59] rather than low-intensity training regimes [49]. A protocol lasting less than four hours returns vulnerable outcomes [20,51,53,54,56,62]. For example, one study [53] based on four sessions of 1 h each was only able to significantly improve one patient’s performance.…”