Imagine you have normalized yourself by not knowing people who they are. You cannot separate faces because they look similar yet almost the same every time. Maybe you see a woman and face that you’re unable to recognize her face even though she is your mom. This is an important situation despite not being so common, and is described as prosopagnosia, in other words, ‘‘face blindness’’. People with this condition cannot analyze the difference in each human face, which is a lifelong disorder. A person can either experience congenital/developmental or acquired prosopagnosia. Congenital prosopagnosia can be experienced by genetic detection in relatives, while acquired prosopagnosia can result from brain damage or some forms that progress without any obvious symptoms or lesions. Acquired prosopagnosia may occur after brain damage because of an accident, trauma, coma, etc. In addition, some cases showed that some individuals could pair object visuals. On the other hand, congenital can be experienced connaturally, alone, or along with some other syndromes or conditions1–4.
There are millions of cases of this disorder, and to understand correctly, there are several reports that an individual who experiences acquired prosopagnosia (AP), has an impairment of face recognition despite seeing differences in other features or objects like buildings, clothes, etc5. To continue, the University of London worked on a study where developmental prosopagnosia (DP) individuals and control individuals run two tests: an expression skill test and a facial identity skill test. Test results showed that DP’s performed weak identity task performance compared to control individuals even though they performed nearly the same expression skill performance as control individuals6.
A person who experiences AP or DP may have some social life difficulties compared to others. Because they cannot distinguish facial features, they usually look for other important things. This can be hair, clothes, accessories, voice, or maybe the way they walk2,3,7. Also, a study shows that despite no demonstrated connection between genders for this condition, females self-reported more than males. The study says that questionnaires showed them a deficient number of self-reports, so be more cautious, it would be better if this topic had more awareness8.
Because it is a rare disorder, we need to understand that there is still a lot to take care of to have a chance of giving a healthy lifespan to people who experiences this condition. Until this year, researches are still ongoing; one example is a study by Chelsea Smith in 2019. It included DP individuals to test if color perception is linked to this disorder. The study ran the test with 92 DP individuals and 92 matched control individuals, and it showed that color perception has no connection with developmental prosopagnosia9.
To sum up, prosopagnosia is a rare condition with two types: developmental and congenital. Acquired prosopagnosia (AP) happens when a person experiences a brain injury, and the severity of this condition is associated with the damage. Usually, reports come with other visual difficulties or disorders. To continue, developmental prosopagnosia is a lifelong condition due to a brain lesion1-3. Like the examples given here, there are many studies about prosopagnosia to find the associated perceptions or to have a long-lasting treatment method, maybe permanent if possible.
References:
- Corrow SL, Dalrymple KA, Barton JJS. Prosopagnosia: current perspectives. Eye Brain. 2016;8:165. doi:10.2147/EB.S92838
- Cook R, Biotti F. Current Biology Developmental prosopagnosia. R312 Curr Biol. 2016;26:307-318. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.01.008
- Muscat R, Zammit C. Face blindness. Published online 2020. Accessed September 20, 2022. https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/52399
- Albonico A, Barton J. Progress in perceptual research: the case of prosopagnosia. F1000Research. 2019;8. doi:10.12688/F1000RESEARCH.18492.1
- Jansari A, Miller S, Pearce L, et al. The man who mistook his neuropsychologist for a popstar: when configural processing fails in acquired prosopagnosia.
- Fisher K, Towler J, Eimer M. Face identity matching is selectively impaired in developmental prosopagnosia. Cortex. 2017;89:11-27. doi:10.1016/J.CORTEX.2017.01.003
- Schmalzl L, Palermo R, Coltheart M. Cognitive heterogeneity in genetically based prosopagnosia: A family study. J Neuropsychol. 2008;2(1):99-117. doi:10.1348/174866407X256554
- Self-ratings of face recognition ability are influenced by gender but not prosopagnosia severity. – PsycNET. Accessed September 20, 2022. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-06647-001
- Smith C, Susilo T. Normal colour perception in developmental prosopagnosia. Sci Reports 2021 111. 2021;11(1):1-9. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-92840-6
Figure Reference: Prosopagnosia: Face Blindness | BiologyWedsComputer. Accessed September 25, 2022.
Inspector: Elif BÖCÜ
