A century of prosopometamorphopsia studies

Prosopometamorphopsia is an extremely rare disorder of visual perception characterised by facial distortions. We here review 81 cases (eight new ones and 73 published over the past century) to shed light on face gestalts. Our analysis indicates that brain systems underlying gestalts have genuine network properties, in sense they are widely disseminated built such spatially normal faces can be maintained even when large parts compromised. found bilateral distortions were primarily associated with right-sided occipital lesions, unilateral lesions ipsilateral distorted hemifield splenium corpus callosum. also tentative evidence for involvement left frontal regions fusing vertical hemi-images faces, right parietal horizontal hemi-images. Evidence supporting remarkable adaptability comes from relatively high recovery rates we found, predominance hemi-prosopometamorphopsia, a phenomenon called cerebral asthenopia (heightened fatigability) which points dynamic nature compensatory mechanisms maintaining perception, chronic prosopometamorphopsia. Finally, our suggests specialised networks representation familiar-versus-unfamiliar own-versus-other may present, although this need further study.