Retrieval of a face discrimination during suppression of monkey temporal cortex with cold.

Cells in the monkey temporal cortex that respond selectively to faces suggest that monkeys might have a brain structure similar to that in humans where lesions produce prosopagnosia, but effects of lesions on retrieval of face discriminations have been ambiguous in monkeys. It is possible that the stimuli in the monkey experiments were contaminated with non-face elements that could be discriminated by other parts of the visual system. In this experiment we modified the image of a monkey face creating two faces that were identical except for their internal features. We trained monkeys to discriminate these faces and then reversibly suppressed the inferotemporal cortex with cold and tested their ability to recall them. Cooling the temporal cortex produced a severe impairment in retrieval of the discrimination that remained constant across six 40-trial replications.