Abstract EN:

27 patients with semantic dementia (with bilateral but asymmetric anterior temporal lesions) and 20 patients with unilateral temporal excision for intractable epilepsy recognised then identified famous faces and names. From the results of these experiments, we consider that person identification requires bilateral convergence zones (PINs) which lie on medial part of anterior temporal lobes. Each PIN bind together all semantic features which are stored in secondary cortices but have a preferential access to semantic features stored in homolateral hemisphere. Thus, right PINs have a preferential access to structural and shared biographical features, left PINs to specific biographical features. Right PINs are reached by faces and names, but left PINs only by names. Patients with semantic dementia do not show any sign of cognitive or emotional implicit recognition. This lead us to consider that implicit and explicit recognition occur from the same occipito-temporal identification network