I can't recognize your face but I can recognize its movement

Idiosyncratic facial movements can provide a route to facial identity ( review in Roark, Barrett, Spence, Abdi, & O'Toole, 2003). However, it is unclear whether recognizing a face in this way involves the same cognitive or neural mechanisms that are involved in recognizing a static face. Three studies on a developmental prosopagnosic ( C. S.) showed that although he is impaired at recognizing static faces, he can discriminate between dynamic identities ( Experiments 1a and 1b) and can learn to name individuals on the basis of their idiosyncratic facial movements ( Experiment 2), at levels that are comparable to those of matched and undergraduate control groups. These results suggest a possible cognitive dissociation between mechanisms involved in dynamic compared to static face recognition. However, future work is needed to fully understand this dissociation.