Neuroanatomical correlates of the Benton Facial Recognition Test and Judgment of Line Orientation Test

Two of the most successful and widely used tests developed by Arthur Benton and colleagues are the Facial Recognition Test (FRT) and Judgment of Line Orientation Test (JLO), which probe visuoperceptual and visuospatial functions typically associated with right hemisphere structures, especially parietal, occipitoparietal, and occipitotemporal structures. Taking advantage of a large database of focal lesion patients (the Iowa Neurological Patient Registry), we used a new lesion-deficit mapping technique to investigate the neuroanatomical correlates of FRT and JLO performance. For the FRT, there were 201 patients with relevant data; of these, 38 were impaired on the FRT, and failure was most strongly associated with lesions in the right posterior-inferior parietal and right ventral occipitotemporal (fusiform gyrus) areas. For the JLO, there were 181 patients with relevant data; of these, 23 were impaired on the JLO, and failure was most strongly associated with lesions in the right posterior parietal region. These findings put new empirical teeth in the localizing value of the FRT and JLO tests, and they extend and sharpen previous work that had pointed to right posterior structures as being important for FRT and JLO performance.