Developmental prosopagnosia with concurrent topographical difficulties: A case report and virtual reality training programme

Abstract

Several neuropsychological case studies report brain-damaged individuals with concurrent impairments in face recognition (i.e., prosopagnosia) and topographical orientation. Recently, individuals with a developmental form of topographical disorientation have also been described, and several case reports of individuals with developmental prosopagnosia provide anecdotal evidence of concurrent navigational difficulties. Clearly, the co-occurrence of these difficulties can exacerbate the negative psychosocial consequences associated with each condition. This paper presents the first detailed case report of an individual (FN) with developmental prosopagnosia alongside difficulties in topographical orientation. FN's performance on an extensive navigational battery indicated that she primarily has difficulties in the formation and retrieval of cognitive maps. We then evaluated the effectiveness of a short-term virtual reality training programme and found that she is able to form a cognitive map of a particular environment following intense overlearning. Surprisingly, FN's performance on a face recognition task also improved following training. While the latter finding was unexpected and requires further exploration, the training programme reported here may help to alleviate some of the compounded negative psychosocial consequences that are associated with difficulties in finding both locations and people.

Keywords: Cognitive map; Developmental prosopagnosia; Face recognition; Navigation; Topographical disorientation.