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Recognition disorders for famous faces and voices: a review of the literature and normative data of a new test battery

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Abstract

Several anatomo-clinical investigations have shown that familiar face recognition disorders not due to high level perceptual defects are often observed in patients with lesions of the right anterior temporal lobe (ATL). The meaning of these findings is, however, controversial, because some authors claim that these patients show pure instances of modality-specific ‘associative prosopagnosia’, whereas other authors maintain that in these patients voice recognition is also impaired and that these patients have a ‘multimodal person recognition disorder’. To solve the problem of the nature of famous faces recognition disorders in patients affected by right ATL lesions, it is therefore very important to verify with formal tests if these patients are or are not able to recognize others by voice, but a direct comparison between the two modalities is hindered by the fact that voice recognition is more difficult than face recognition. To circumvent this difficulty, we constructed a test battery in which subjects were requested to recognize the same persons (well-known at the national level) through their faces and voices, evaluating familiarity and identification processes. The present paper describes the ‘Famous People Recognition Battery’ and reports the normative data necessary to clarify the nature of person recognition disorders observed in patients affected by right ATL lesions.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Antonia Ferrara and Dr. Natascia Guarino for their precious help in data gathering.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Neuropsychology, Institute of Neurology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Largo Agostino Gemelli, 8, 00168, Rome, Italy

    Davide Quaranta, Chiara Piccininni, Camillo Marra & Guido Gainotti

  2. Laboratory of Clinical and Behavioural Neurology, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy

    Giovanni Augusto Carlesimo & Guido Gainotti

  3. Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy

    Simona Luzzi

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Costanza Papagno

  5. Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy

    Luigi Trojano

  6. Maugeri Foundation, IRCCS, Telese Terme, Italy

    Luigi Trojano

Authors
  1. Davide Quaranta
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  2. Chiara Piccininni
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  3. Giovanni Augusto Carlesimo
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  4. Simona Luzzi
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  5. Camillo Marra
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  6. Costanza Papagno
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  7. Luigi Trojano
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  8. Guido Gainotti
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Correspondence to Davide Quaranta.

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Quaranta, D., Piccininni, C., Carlesimo, G.A. et al. Recognition disorders for famous faces and voices: a review of the literature and normative data of a new test battery. Neurol Sci 37, 345–352 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-015-2437-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-015-2437-1

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