Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Face processing is one of the most important skills that humans possess and is vitally important for social interactions. Different aspects of face processing, e.g. identity and expression, are thought to be processed in separate areas of the brain. Less is known about how these different areas interact. Prosopagnosia is an impairment of face perception and recognition, which can involve problems with perception of facial identity, and sometimes of facial structure. Studying individuals with prosopagnosia in comparison to healthy controls will tell us whether our predictions about the individual modules for face processing and how they interact are correct. Understanding the underlying brain changes in prosopagnosia may lead to better treatment or rehabilitation approaches for these individuals. This research will use MRI techniques to image the brain while participants view pictures of neutral faces, expressive faces, and objects. We will determine the nature of the structural and functional brain connectivity in all subjects and determine whether damage to the core face processing modules, or the connections between them, correlates with impairments in specific aspects of facial processing.