“Prosopagnosia” by Joshua Gray

You are in a crowded department store mindlessly meddling through the vast array of merchandise. You recognize most of the items very quickly, perhaps even unconsciously. You suddenly hear your name from across the store. Somebody recognizes you. When you turn around, you see a person standing there, but you just do not know whom this person is. The struggle to decipher the identity of this stranger continues as they babble on as if they have known you forever. We have all experienced this dreaded, albeit momentary lapse in memory. But what if that person across the store was your own wife or mother? This is the sort of horror that people like college student Jacob Hodes deal with every day of their lives. Jacob suffers from a condition called prosopagnosia, or more commonly, face blindness.

Prosopagnosia seems like a condition reserved for Hollywood’s silver screen, but is much more common than one might want to believe. Garga Chatterjee, a doctoral candidate pursuing research in prosopagnosia at Harvard University stated: “2.5 percent of the world’s population has the disorder. That’s one person in every 50. That is not rare at all.” (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/living-with-face-blindness/279898/) People with prosopagnosia can tell that they are looking at a face, but cannot differentiate one face from another face. They must use other empirical cues to decipher who it is they are communicating with. Many people with this condition have suffered damage to a specific area on the temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex of the brain. (Goldstein, 2011)

While people coping with this debilitating disorder struggle through life laboriously attempting to recognize people close to them, it seems as though we are still in the early stages in regard to our understanding and ability to diagnose the condition. There exist only 100 documented cases of prosopagnosia in worldwide literature on medicine. If 2.5 percent of the world’s population truly does suffer from face blindness, this is a startling discrepancy. Perhaps one of the problems in this lack of diagnoses lies in the traditional nature of the research. Prosopagnosia has classically been studied in people who develop the disorder following a traumatic brain injury or a stroke. There have been recent developments in research that have made clear the existence of “developmental” or “congenital” prosopagnosia. There may exist a genetic factor prevalent in this disorder that was ignored in the past. (http://prosopagnosiaresearch.org/index/information)

Jacob Hodes never suffered a stroke or a traumatic brain injury. When Jacob told his family about his diagnosis, his own father’s prosopagnosia was discovered. It seems that Jacob suffers from the more recently discovered congenital form of the disorder. As Jacob struggles through college classes, parties, and general life, he lives with the fact that there is no current cure for face blindness known to researchers.

Can you imagine looking at yourself in the mirror, and not even recognizing your own face? As devastating as this sounds, this is something that 1 in 50 people may be dealing with worldwide. As intelligent or insightful as an individual may be, prosopagnosia is an often crippling diagnosis, which can lead to feelings of isolation or depression, and fear of social situations. Hopefully research in medicine and neuroscience can find a cure for this disorder sooner rather than later. Jacob Hodes said: “It’s not that I don’t know everyone. The problem is I don’t know whom I know.” (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/living-with-face-blindness/279898/) As research develops, perhaps Jacob will one day recognize his friends and loved ones without the use of compensatory mechanisms. It would be nice to know whom you know.

 

*Watch Jacob’s appearance on “60 Minutes.”- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-blindness-when-everyone-is-a-stranger-20-03-2012/

 

Sources:

Chowhan, S. (2013, September 24). Living With Face Blindness. The Atlantic. Retrieved January 29, 2014, from http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/living-with-face-blindness/279898/

Goldstein, E. B., (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, And Everyday Experience   (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. (Original work published 2005)

http://prosopagnosiaresearch.org/index/information

One thought on ““Prosopagnosia” by Joshua Gray

  1. Lori Anne Hohn

    This is quite fascinating. I can’t imagine going through life and not recognizing faces. Thanks for posting this.
    Lori

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