Face shape and face identity processing in behavioral variant fronto-temporal dementia: A specific deficit for familiarity and name recognition of famous faces

Abstract

Deficits in face processing have been described in the behavioral variant of fronto-temporal dementia (bvFTD), primarily regarding the recognition of facial expressions. Less is known about face shape and face identity processing. Here we used a hierarchical strategy targeting face shape and face identity recognition in bvFTD and matched healthy controls. Participants performed 3 psychophysical experiments targeting face shape detection (Experiment 1), unfamiliar face identity matching (Experiment 2), familiarity categorization and famous face-name matching (Experiment 3). The results revealed group differences only in Experiment 3, with a deficit in the bvFTD group for both familiarity categorization and famous face-name matching. Voxel-based morphometry regression analyses in the bvFTD group revealed an association between grey matter volume of the left ventral anterior temporal lobe and familiarity recognition, while face-name matching correlated with grey matter volume of the bilateral ventral anterior temporal lobes. Subsequently, we quantified familiarity-specific and name-specific recognition deficits as the sum of the celebrities of which respectively only the name or only the familiarity was accurately recognized. Both indices were associated with grey matter volume of the bilateral anterior temporal cortices. These findings extent previous results by documenting the involvement of the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in familiarity detection and the right ATL in name recognition deficits in fronto-temporal lobar degeneration.

Moral processing deficit in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia is associated with facial emotion recognition and brain changes in default mode and salience network areas

“…All results of the genetic analyses were negative. All participants also took part in our previous studies on bvFTD (De Winter, Timmers, et al., ; De Winter, Van den Stock, et al., ; Jastorff et al., ; Van den Stock, De Winter, et al., ).…”

The Role of the Left Anterior Temporal Lobe for Unpredictable and Complex Mappings in Word Reading

“…Specifically, the ventral ATLs, which include portions of the anterior fusiform and inferior temporal gyri, have been linked to processing various types of stimuli such as pictures, environmental sounds, words (Visser and Lambon Ralph, 2011; Visser et al, 2012; Chen et al, 2016) and faces (Collins et al, 2016; De Winter et al, 2016; Harry et al, 2016; Jonas et al, 2016). Therefore, the ventral ATLs appear to be involved in the conceptual processing of stimuli, thus playing a central role in semantic processing (Binney et al, 2010; Collins et al, 2016).…”

Amygdala atrophy affects emotion-related activity in face-responsive regions in frontotemporal degeneration

“…The extended face processing system is comprised of other regions that interact with the regions in the core system depending on the cognitive operation at hand, e.g. the anterior temporal cortex for processing of familiarity and biographical knowledge (De Winter et al, 2016;Kriegeskorte, Formisano, Sorger, & Goebel, 2007). Regarding processing of emotions, a key role is proposed for the amygdala, exerting a modulatory influence on neural face processing de Gelder, Frissen, Barton, & Hadjikhani, 2003;Haxby & Gobbini, 2011).…”