The nature and extent of hemispheric lateralization and its potential for reorganization continues to be debated, although there is general agreement that there is a right hemisphere (RH) advantage for face processing in human adults. Here, we examined face processing and its lateralization in individuals with a single preserved occipitotemporal cortex (OTC), either in the RH or left hemisphere (LH), following early childhood resection for the management of drug-resistant epilepsy. The matched controls and those with a lesion outside of OTC evinced the standard superiority in processing upright over inverted faces and the reverse sensitivity to a nonface category (bicycles). In contrast, the LH and the RH patient groups were significantly less accurate than the controls and showed mild orientation sensitivities at best (and not always in the predicted directions). For the two patient groups, the accuracies of face and bicycle processing did not differ from each other and were not obviously related to performance on intermediate level global form tasks with, again, poorer thresholds for both patient groups than controls and no difference between the patient groups. These findings shed light on the complexity of hemispheric lateralization and face and nonface object processing in individuals following surgical resection of OTC. Overall, this study highlights the unique dynamics and potential for plasticity in those with childhood cortical resection.

尽管人们普遍认为右半球（RH）在成人面部处理方面具有优势，但半球偏侧化的性质和程度及其重组潜力仍然存在争议。在这里，我们检查了在儿童早期切除治疗耐药性癫痫后，右半球或左半球 (LH) 保留有单个枕颞皮层 (OTC) 的个体的面部处理及其偏侧化。匹配的对照和 OTC 之外有病变的对照在处理直立面部方面表现出相对于倒立面部的标准优势，并且对非面部类别（自行车）具有相反的敏感性。相比之下，左手和右手患者组的准确度明显低于对照组，并且充其量表现出轻微的方向敏感性（并且并不总是在预测方向上）。对于两个患者组，面部和自行车处理的准确性彼此没有差异，并且与中级全局表单任务的表现没有明显相关，同样，两个患者组的阈值都比对照组差，并且患者之间没有差异组。这些发现揭示了 OTC 手术切除后个体半球偏侧化以及面部和非面部物体处理的复杂性。总体而言，这项研究强调了儿童皮质切除患者的独特动态和可塑性潜力。