Inversion superiority in visual agnosia may be common to a variety of orientation polarised objects besides faces

Selective impairment in recognition of faces (prosopagnosia) resulting from certain localized cortical lesions has been advanced as an argument for a face specific brain module. The argument is claimed to be strengthened by the discovery of an inversion superiority effect in the recognition of faces by a prosopagnosic patient (Farah et al., Vis Res 1995b;35:2089-2093). The present paper reports an inversion superiority effect in the recognition of faces and shoes in a visual agnosic patient. The finding raises the possibility that several classes of orientationally polarized objects, of which shoes and faces are examples, will exhibit inversion superiority.

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