Walsh & Hoyt: People-specific Amnesia

The last element in the cognitive model of face processing is the person-identity node, containing biographic information about individuals. Because these biographic data can be accessed from several routes, this leads not to prosopagnosia, in which patients can still recognize people from other sensory cues, but to a people-specific amnesia, in which no cues can prompt recollection of other people, while other types of memories remain intact. This has been described with right temporal pole lesions. This localization is consistent with functional imaging studies showing that name and face recognition both activate the anterior middle temporal gyrus and temporal pole. A disconnection between intact face memories and person-identity nodes was proposed in a patient with an unusual left hemispheric lesion who recognized faces as familiar, although he could provide names or biographical details only to the spoken name, not to faces.