Abstract：
In prosopagnosia, brain lesions impair overt face recognition, but not face detection, and may coexist with residual covert recognition of familiar faces. Previous studies that simulated covert recognition in healthy individuals have impaired face detection as well as recognition, thus not fully mirroring the deficits in prosopagnosia. We evaluated a model of covert recognition based on continuous flash suppression (CFS). Familiar and unfamiliar faces and houses were masked while participants performed two discrimination tasks. With increased suppression, face/house discrimination remained largely intact, but face familiarity discrimination deteriorated. Covert recognition was present across all masking levels, evinced by higher pupil dilation to familiar than unfamiliar faces. Pupil dilation was uncorrelated with overt performance across subjects. Thus, CFS can impede overt face recognition without disrupting covert recognition and face detection, mirroring critical features of prosopagnosia. CFS could be used to uncover shared neural mechanisms of covert recognition in prosopagnosic patients and neurotypicals.
摘要：
在前失认症中，脑部病变损害了明显的面部识别，但不是人脸检测，并且可能与对熟悉面孔的残余秘密识别共存。先前在健康个体中模拟隐蔽识别的研究已经损害了面部检测和识别，因此不能完全反映prosopagnosis的缺陷。我们评估了基于连续闪光抑制（CFS）的隐蔽识别模型。熟悉和不熟悉的面孔和房屋被掩盖，而参与者执行了两项歧视任务。随着抑制的增加，面部/房屋歧视在很大程度上保持不变，但是面对熟悉程度的歧视恶化了。隐蔽识别存在于所有掩蔽级别，比不熟悉的面孔更高的瞳孔扩张。瞳孔扩张与受试者的明显表现无关。因此，CFS可以在不干扰隐蔽识别和人脸检测的情况下阻碍公开的人脸识别，反映prosopagnosia的关键特征。CFS可用于发现前变位患者和神经典型患者的隐性识别的共享神经机制。
