Prosopagnosia is known as “a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces (Shiel, p.2). Prosopagnosia, also known as Face Blindness, is believed to be caused by an abnormality or damage to the right fusiform gyrus. This part of the brain coordinates the neural system that controls facial perception and memory (Shiel, p.1).
There is an article written by David Roger Fine where he explains how at his 60 years of age he has been able to live with prosopagnosia. He described it as a very difficult illness, but also said that little by little he was able to compensate it. David mentioned that he noticed how difficult it was during his childhood to identify his twin sisters, but his mom thought it was a matter of laziness. Furthermore, he explained that he did not recall any problems during his childhood when relating with his peers. However, his microsystem was very small. Even though he mentioned not having difficulties, he couldn’t remember faces, instead he remembered special features of each individual. These features included: hats, glasses, freckles, hair color, etc. Moreover, his wife pointed out that he had a tendency to remember the worst features of a person. It wasn’t until he turned 53 years old that he was diagnosed with prosopagnosia. Now in his later years he introduces himself and tells them about his face-blindness. Fine explains how relieved he feels that he finally has a name to what might have seemed rude to many. Now every time someone meets him they must re-introduce themselves. David comments that he is unable to go alone to places as he ends up “recognizing” strangers, and ignoring familiar faces.
Prosopagnosia is a disorder that affects the perception of the individual. It doesn’t allow you to remember the faces of those you know. Perception is the topic of the third lesson. The class textbook explains that people that suffer from prosopagnosia are unable to even recognize themselves sometimes. They can distinguish what faces are, but cannot associate them with the people they know.
References:
Fine, D.R. (2012). A life with Prosopagnosia. EBSCO Host, 29(5), 354-539. doi: 10.1080/02643294.2012.736377
Shiel, W.C. (2014). Face Blindness (Prosopagnosia, Facial Agnosia). MedicineNet.com. Retrieved from http://www.medicinenet.com/face_blindness_prosopagnosia/article.htm
Hi,
I wanted to add the references for my post, but I couldn’t edit the original.
I found extensive references for compensation on gifted children with learning difficulties. While experts recognize that learning disabilities happen at all intelligence levels, I believe, in gifted children is easier to study since the gap between their true abilities and what they are able to archive is notorious.
Paulina
References:
http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/general/faculty/reis/publications/CompensationStrategies.htm
http://www.utoronto.ca/kids/ld.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/for-gifted-children-with-learning-disabilities-homework-can-be-torture/2012/11/25/28f635ea-32c8-11e2-bfd5-e202b6d7b501_story.html
http://gcq.sagepub.com/content/44/2/123.abstract
This is fascinating, great post! !
Thank you Evonne for including the link to this artist, hi art if really impressive. I wonder if he compensates the way David Roger Fine did: putting attention to every single facial details and expressions. While he is not able to recognize faces, he is extremely skillful to include details in his art. The piece of the man smoking is so so vivid, you can even see the smoke crossing his upper lips…
I am always amazed with the human capabilities to compensate when our senses or perceptions are not working as usual, many people won’t notice until someone else points it out, we only know what we know, right? I have a friend who is color blinded and only found out about it when he was 20, he could drive and do perfectly in school, but when he commented about our friend’s nice gray pants (when she was wearing bright yellow) we all needed to say something about it. And yes, he was color blinded!
I also work with children who have visual processing challenges, and it’s amazing to see how from very early age they manage strategies to perform as the rest, so many of them won’t be recognized as having visual challenges unless an expert works with them.
Thank you for the great post!
Paulina
I found your post on prosopagnosia very interesting. This post reminded me of a story I had read in a book by Oliver Sacks. The book was a collection of stories from a neurologist, and one of these stories was the case study of, literally, a man who mistook his wife for a hat, and many other objects. The man was a music professor and was excellent and remembering pieces of music, but could never quite recognize his student’s faces. He could see perfectly well, but he could not piece together different parts of an object to make it whole. The man had a condition similar to prosopagnosia; the condition is called visual agnosia. This disorder can cause impaired object recognition and impaired object identification. Upon further reading, I found that prosopagnosia is a subdivision of visual agnosia. You may also be interested to learn that there are several other disorders under visual agnosia, and that auditory agnosia also exists (Sacks, 1985).
References:
Sacks, O. (1985). The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales. (p. 14). Retrieved from http://robinlea.com/pub/wife-hat.pdf
Hi Debbie,
I really enjoyed your post. Prosopagnosia is a very fascinating disorder and it had not occurred to me how others might respond to someone who has Prosopagnosia. I often have difficulty remembering people’s names and it is very frustrating, so I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to be unable to recognize a person’s face.
This got me wondering what a person’s face actually looks like to a person with Prosopagnosia. I became especially curious if there are any artists out there with Prosopagnosia because I would find it interesting to see a painting of how they see a person’s face. So I searched the Internet and found out that there is!
His name is Chuck Close and you can see some of his work at http://www.Pacegallery.com. Here’s a direct link to his page, http://www.pacegallery.com/artists/80/chuck-close. His work is amazing and, of all things, he is best known for his large portraits of the human face!
I also found a video of him being interviewed on The Colbert Report (Aug 12, 2010), where he shares a little about his disorder and how he is able to commit a face to memory by “flattening it out”, as in a photograph. You see the video at this link… http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/343737/august-12-2010/chuck-close?xrs=share_copy
Thanks again for the informative post on Prosopagnosia.
Hi Debbie, my name is Ashishpal Singh. I found your submission to be very intriguing and it hit close to home as one of my closest friends happens to suffer from Prosopagnosia. He is a musician however and is very fond of sound so he relies heavily on voices to recognize people. I have also witnessed him “recognizing” strangers on the street and he would often feel embarrassed to discover that the individual was not who he thought they were. Due to this, he became more and more introverted over time and since he prefers to keep his illness personal, most people assume that he is just rude. He also in general avoids any large gatherings that a lot of acquaintances are attending because he feels overwhelmed trying to distinguish who is who. Although he has improved, he is still struggling with his ailment but I do think he will manage it better with time. Your blog entry did bring up a lot of interesting ways in which David Roger Fine handled the issue and I will definitely be sharing the article with him. Thank you.