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Facial Plast Surg 2019; 35(05): 525-533
DOI: 10.1055/s-0038-1666786
Original Research
Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

Face Perception in Face Transplant Patients

Evrim Gülbetekin
1   Department of Psychology, Akdeniz Universitesi, Antalya, Turkey
,
Seda Bayraktar
1   Department of Psychology, Akdeniz Universitesi, Antalya, Turkey
,
Özlenen Özkan
2   Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Akdeniz Universitesi, Antalya, Turkey
,
Hilmi Uysal
3   Department of Neurology, Akdeniz Universitesi, Antalya, Turkey
,
Ömer Özkan
2   Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Akdeniz Universitesi, Antalya, Turkey
› Author Affiliations
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Publication History

Publication Date:
20 August 2019 (online)

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Abstract

The authors tested face discrimination, face recognition, object discrimination, and object recognition in two face transplantation patients (FTPs) who had facial injury since infancy, a patient who had a facial surgery due to a recent wound, and two control subjects. In Experiment 1, the authors showed them original faces and morphed forms of those faces and asked them to rate the similarity between the two. In Experiment 2, they showed old, new, and implicit faces and asked whether they recognized them or not. In Experiment 3, they showed them original objects and morphed forms of those objects and asked them to rate the similarity between the two. In Experiment 4, they showed old, new, and implicit objects and asked whether they recognized them or not. Object discrimination and object recognition performance did not differ between the FTPs and the controls. However, the face discrimination performance of FTP2 and face recognition performance of the FTP1 were poorer than that of the controls were. Therefore, the authors concluded that the structure of the face might affect face processing.

Keywords

face transplantation - face discrimination - face recognition
 

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