Task and Spatial Frequency Effects on Face Specialization

There is strong evidence that face processing is localized in the brain. The double dissociation between prosopagnosia, a face recognition deficit occurring after brain damage, and visual object agnosia, difficulty recognizing other kinds of complex objects, indicates that face and nonface object recognition may be served by partially independent mechanisms in the brain. Is neural specialization innate or learned? We suggest that this specialization could be the result of a competitive learning mechanism that, during development, devotes neural resources to the tasks they are best at performing. Further, we suggest that the specialization arises as an interaction between task requirements and developmental constraints. In this paper, we present a feed-forward computational model of visual processing, in which two modules compete to classify input stimuli. When one module receives low spatial frequency information and the other receives high spatial frequency information, and the tas...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: NIPS
• Authors: Matthew N. Dailey, Garrison W. Cottrell
• Keywords: Face Recognition, Face Recognition Deficit, NIPS 1997, NIPS 2007, Visual Object Agnosia