Face perception in health and disease

For most of us, face recognition is a rapid and effortless process which enables us to identify people who are familiar to us. Underlying this remarkable, but perhaps overlooked, aspect of visual function is a network of interconnected brain regions which processes the raw visual information provided by the eyes. As a result, face recognition is vulnerable to both ocular disease (e.g. age-related macular degeneration) which compromises visual input and neurological impairments, such as prosopagnosia (face blindness), which disrupt activity within higher-level brain regions. This article reviews current evidence about these causes of impaired face perception and outlines the clinical implications for affected patients.