The Cognitive Neuroscience of Face Processing: A Special Issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology (Special Issues of Cognitive Neuropsychology) - Softcover

For social primates like us, faces may be the most biologically significant stimuli we view. Faces provide information not only about identity but also about mood, age, sex, and direction of overt attention. Does our ability to extract this information from faces rely on special-purpose cognitive and neural mechanisms distinct from those involved in the perception of other classes of visual stimuli? If so, how do those mechanisms work? Do these mechanisms arise from experience alone, or is there an innate predisposition to create them? How is face recognition affected by development and aging? What is the relation between face recognition and other cognitive functions such as memory and attention and the neural substrates that mediate them?
This special issue showcases new findings from many investigators in this field who address these fundamental questions in studies that use a wide range of experimental techniques including brain imaging, ERPs, patient studies, and single-unit recording in monkeys.

Morris Moscovitch is the Max and Gianna Glassman Chair in Neuropsychology and Aging in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He is also the Senior Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. His research focuses on the neuropsychology of memory in humans while also studying attention, face-recognition, and hemispheric specialization in young and older adults, and in people with brain damage.