[TN-Bird] Prosopagnosia, fusiform gyrus & birding
- From: kbreault <kbreault@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:22:05 -0700 (PDT)
TN Birders:
There is an interesting article in the August 30th New Yorker written by Oliver
Sacks (the well known neurologist with books including, An Anthropologist on
Mars and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, on the inability some people
have to recognize faces and places, prosopagnosia. An abstract is available
at:
www.newyorker.com (the full article requires subscription). It appears that
lesions on the fusiform gyrus, a part of the brain also known as the "fusiform
face area," and that responsible for face recognition, can cause
prosopagnosia.
The interface (as it were) between humans and birds is in this part of
the article: "Isabel Gauthier and her colleagues tested a group of car experts
and a group of expert birders, comparing them with a group of normal subjects.
The fusiform face area, they found, was activated when all the groups looked at
pictures of faces. But it was also activated in the car experts when they were
asked to identify particular cars, and in the birders when they were asked to
identify particular birds. The fusiform face area is tuned primarily for
facial
recognition, it seems, but some of it can be trained to distinguish individual
items of other sorts. (If, then, an expert bird spotter or car buff is
unlikely
enough to acquire prosopagnosia, he will also, we might suspect, lose his
ability to identify birds or cars.)" Note that Gauthier is a professor of
psychology at Vanderbilt and her publication on birders is: Gauthier, I., et
al., "Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face
recognition, Nature Neuroscience, 2000, 3 (2), 191-197.
Kevin Breault
Brentwood
=================NOTES TO SUBSCRIBER=====================
The TN-Bird Net requires you to SIGN YOUR MESSAGE with
first and last name, CITY (TOWN) and state abbreviation.
You are also required to list the COUNTY in which the birds
you report were seen. The actual DATE OF OBSERVATION should
appear in the first paragraph.
_____________________________________________________________
To post to this mailing list, simply send email to:
tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
_____________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send email to:
tn-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field.
______________________________________________________________
TN-Bird Net is owned by the Tennessee Ornithological Society
Neither the society(TOS) nor its moderator(s)
endorse the views or opinions expressed
by the members of this discussion group.
Moderator: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN
wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
------------------------------
Assistant Moderator Andy Jones
Cleveland, OH
-------------------------------
Assistant Moderator Dave Worley
Rosedale, VA
--------------------------------
Assistant Moderator Chris O'Bryan
Clarksville, TN
__________________________________________________________
Visit the Tennessee Ornithological Society
web site at http://www.tnbirds.org
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
ARCHIVES
TN-Bird Net Archives at //www.freelists.org/archives/tn-bird/
MAP RESOURCES
Tenn.Counties Map at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/states/tennessee3.gif
Aerial photos to complement google maps http://local.live.com
_____________________________________________________________
Other related posts:
