Prosopagnosia. Ever Forget A Face?

Prosopagnosia:

...also called face blindness, is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision making) remain intact. The term originally referred to a condition following acute brain damage (acquired prosopagnosia), but a congenital or developmental form of the disorder also exists, which may affect up to 2.5% of the population.

Source

I was surfing the intertubez, when I ran across this article. The surprising thing Brad Pitt and I have in common, which I recommend reading. Honestly. I had never heard of this condition before. So after a little digging, I realized 2.5% may be a conservative estimate of how many people have this condition. How many of us have a mild form of this and don't realize it? The two videos are worth watching in my opinion, and give you a good feel for how complicated life can become for those with more severe cases of this...


Interesting? Or scary? Here are 7 signs you may be dealing with prosopagnosia in your own life.

You have failed to recognize a close friend or family member, especially when you weren’t expecting to see them.
When you meet someone new, you try to remember their hairstyle or a distinctive feature rather than their face.
You have trouble following films or television shows that have more than a few distinctive characters.
You have failed to recognize yourself in the mirror and/or have difficulty identifying yourself in photographs.
When someone casually waves or says hello in the street, you more often than not don’t know who they are.
When someone gets a haircut, you may not recognize them when you see them again.
You have difficulty recognizing neighbors, friends, coworkers, clients, schoolmates (etc.) out of context.

Source

Evidently, this was thought to be associated with head trauma for decades. Now it is recognized that people can be born with this problem, and/or develop it later in life. Do you, or anyone you know, suffer from this neurological condition?

After my head injury I had that occasionally for a couple of years. I could not even recognize my wife until she spoke occasionally. That is sort of scarey. Now it's back to normal, I can selectively block seeing people I don't want to see. Walk right by as if they aren't there. Funny thing is that if you look busy or in a hurry, they don't say anything.

I think that this may be more common than most people think. All people selectively filter out things when we are preoccupied. People are in their own little worlds constantly.

reply to post by rickymouse

Then yours originally came through head trauma. I'm glad you were able to recover from it. Thanks for the input.

Klassified
reply to post by rickymouse

 

Then yours originally came through head trauma. I'm glad you were able to recover from it. Thanks for the input.

The scarring of my temporal lobe is probably permanent. After all, it has been ten years already. I still have the TLE but can control it pretty well most times. Controlling it means I can have problems with my hypoglycemia though. I found that increasing proteins in my diet helps with that after I talked to a pharmacist. It severely limits my ability to work but in no way limits my ability to have a somewhat normal life if I watch what I eat and avoid situations where I fire up my muscles. I also have a lifetime history of low blood volume which wasn't really a problem before but lowering consumption of certain foods because of the TLE has accentuated that problem.

When you can't recognize the face of people you know well, it is kinda scarey at first till you understand it. I could recognize voices well and this made the face recognizable immediately. It is kind of weird. I am glad that hasn't happened for many years now but if it does happen in the future, I hope my hearing isn't giving me problems.

I don't think this is actually rare, I remember older people saying hi to me with a weird gaze but when I said something they smiled and knew who I was and started talking about things. They are afraid to say their memory is going but learn to live with it. No pill is going to fix this, it requires verification in the mind from a few senses to help with the memory.

I could have never comprehended this if I had not personally experienced it. I had curiosity and a lot of time on my hand so I researched this after I quit taking medicines that I could not tolerate to treat the epilepsy. The meds severely dampened my short term memory from toxic effects from restricting liver function. This reduction caused my body not to detox correctly and the toxin buildup caused all sorts of problems. I am better now but I still have this TLE inconvenience that caused me to lose my ability to work. I wasn't going to just roll over and die, I chose to study medicine again, my original choice of a profession when I was young. I am glad I quit back then, it would have been impossible to learn how the body works without a life full of observations to help me learn. Medicine cannot be learned just from a book. Experience to relate to the studies is essential. Older doctors have that experience, but it seems they retire when they can actually start really helping people.