Prosopagnosia and structural encoding of faces: evidence from event-related potentials

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to unfamiliar faces and to houses from a severely prosopagnosic patient (PHD) and 24 control subjects. For all control subjects, faces elicited an enhanced negativity at lateral temporal electrodes (N170). This component was absent for PHD. Comparable results were obtained in response to inverted faces and houses. A selective deficit in face recognition is therefore reflected by abnormalities in ERP components specific to faces. As PHD was shown to have substantial deficits on tasks requiring the structural analysis of faces, these findings are consistent with the view that the N170 reflects processes involved in the structural encoding of faces, and may be a measure of selective impairments in the analysis of face components.