October 17 Blog

I thought that Bourtchouldaze’s discussion of prosopagnosia was very interesting, particularly the idea that even though such patients could not consciously identify any faces, changes in their skin’s electrical conductivity indicated that they can, on some unconscious level, identify faces. This made me wonder three things. First, I was curious as to what would make the researchers even begin to look at the electrical conductivity of the skin, for it seems that it would have been more likely for them to look for changes in conductivity (or another variable) in various parts of the brain. Second, I wondered why an increase in skin conductivity, which indicates a nervous, emotional, or guilty predisposition, would relate to face recognition; though emotional doesn’t seem very far off, feelings of guilt and nervousness are not ones I would think would be associated with knowledge of faces. Third, what are the differences, in terms of brain structures used, between “covert” recognition and “overt” recognition? Even though the facial recognition in this patient was unconscious, it seems unlikely that it would entirely bypass the brain structures used in conscious recognition. Bourtchouldaze states earlier in the chapter that “information flows through a set of distinct but interconnected neural networks, each of which performs a certain job. These interconnected networks allow information to be processed in a parallel fashion so that damage to one part of the network does not necessarily affect the function of the rest of the system.” What distinguishes, then, the part of the network involved in conscious facial recognition from the part that is involved in unconscious facial recognition?