PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Nathan Witthoft
AU  - Sonia Poltoratski
AU  - Mai Nguyen
AU  - Golijeh Golarai
AU  - Alina Liberman
AU  - Karen F. LaRocque
AU  - Mary E. Smith
AU  - Kalanit Grill-Spector
TI  - Reduced spatial integration in the ventral visual cortex underlies face recognition deficits in developmental prosopagnosia
AID  - 10.1101/051102
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 051102
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/04/29/051102.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/04/29/051102.full
AB  - Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is characterized by deficits in face recognition without gross brain abnormalities. However, the neural basis of DP is not well understood. We measured population receptive fields (pRFs) in ventral visual cortex of DPs and typical adults to assess the contribution of spatial integration to face processing. While DPs showed typical retinotopic organization of ventral visual cortex and normal pRF sizes in early visual areas, we found significantly reduced pRF sizes in face-selective regions and in intermediate areas hV4 and VO1. Across both typicals and DPs, face recognition ability correlated positively with pRF size in both face-selective regions and VO1, whereby participants with larger pRFs perform better. However, face recognition ability is correlated with both pRF size and ROI volume only in face-selective regions. These findings suggest that smaller pRF sizes in DP may reflect a deficit in spatial integration affecting holistic processing required for face recognition.