FACE PROCESSING IMPAIRMENTS AFTER AMYGDALOTOMY

We report an investigation efface processing impairments in D.R., a 51 -year-old woman with a partial bilateral amygdalotomy. D.R. was able t o recognize pre-operatively familiar faces, but she showed generalized problems of name retrieval and a more circumscribed deficit affecting the recognition effaces learnt post-operatively. In contrast to her p oop memory for new faces, D.R.'s ability to match simultaneously prese nted photographs of unfamiliar faces was unimpaired. However D.R. also experienced deficits in expression processing which compromised the r ecognition of emotion from people's faces; she was poor both at matchi ng and at identifying photographs of emotional facial expressions. In addition, her interpretation of eye gaze direction was defective, show ing a more general problem in reading social signals from the face. Th e presence of impairments affecting the learning of new faces and the comprehension of gaze direction and facial expressions of emotion is c onsistent with the hypothesis of a role for the amygdala in learning a nd social behaviour.