Face Blindness a.k.a. Prosopagnosia

This series will look into different illnesses/diseases/disorders and understand what they are. No one is perfect, and everyone has some condition, whether you are aware of it, believe it, or recognize it or not. In the end, it is a matter of whether it affects your daily life and whether it causes you inconvenience in going on with your days. In high school, I self-diagnosed with OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), fortunately, I learned to cope with it and tell myself to "let it go," so it doesn't affect my life as much as it used to.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon a video about face blindness when I was on Youtube; it briefly mentioned the illness; it was my first time hearing of the disease, and had wanted to learn more about it and started doing some brief researches.

Can you imagine not being able to recognize your loved ones?

Imagine seeing your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, son, daughter, grandson, or granddaughter; you see their faces but cannot seem to understand what emotion and affection you are supposed to have according to your relationship with them. As many as 1 in 50 people, about 2%, have some prosopagnosia; however, many do live normal lives without realizing they have the disorder.

Face blindness, facial agnosia, or medically known as prosopagnosia, is a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces. The term prosopagnosia came from Greek words for "face" and "lack of knowledge." In our brains, there is a large specialized region in the inferior temporal cortex called the fusiform gyrus; the area plays important roles in object and faces recognition, as well as recognition of facial expressions; in simpler words, it is the area that gives us the peculiar ability to detect faces in water stains, clouds and even grilled cheese sandwiches all thanks to our exquisitely sensitive face-detection neurons. When the area is severed, it results in face blindness and makes sufferers unable to recognize themselves in pictures and even mirrors, in the most severe cases.

Usually, face blindness is a lifelong problem, and there are actually two types of prosopagnosia, developmental and acquired. Developmental prosopagnosia is actually the most common kind of face blindness. The disorder is found to be highly heritable, meaning if one parent has developmental prosopagnosia, their children would each have a 50% chance of inheriting it. People with development prosopagnosia fail to develop the ability to recognize faces, and individuals born with the condition may not even realize they have the problem. People with the condition have reported at least 1 first-degree relative who also experiences problems with facial recognition.

Acquired prosopagnosia refers to the condition of people who developed prosopagnosia after suffering damage to their brains, such as a head injury or a stroke, which is relatively rare. Individuals experiencing the condition after injury will quickly notice their loss of ability to recognize people they know. However, if brain injury occurred in early childhood before the child has fully developed the ability to recognize faces, they may grow up not realizing they cannot recognize faces as well as others.

Prosopagnosia is not related to memory problems, vision loss or learning disabilities. Still, it is sometimes associated with other developmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder, Turner syndrome and Williams syndrome.

There are different levels of face blindness, and people with different levels of face blindness experience different kinds of difficulty in facial recognition. Some people may find it difficult to recognize a familiar face (including their own). Others might not be able to differentiate between unknown faces. In some severe cases, people may not be able to distinguish faces from different objects.

A person with prosopagnosia may avoid social interaction and develop a social anxiety disorder, or they may also have difficulty forming relationships or experience problems with their career. Feelings of depression are common. Many people also have difficulty navigating due to their inability to process angles or distance or problems remembering places and landmarks.

Individuals leading lives with the disorder often have difficulty recognizing loved ones and friends. There are two commonly used tests, the Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT) and the Warrington Recognition Memory of Faces (RMF), to diagnose prosopagnosia. Unfortunately, there is currently no cure for face blindness, it is a recurring and consistent condition that is lifelong. A major part of "treatment" for prosopagnosia is usually focused on helping individuals develop compensatory strategies, meaning adopting various coping mechanisms to make it easier for them to identify people. Although not as effective as facial recognition, they often recognize other features such as voice, clothing, or unique physical attributes.

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Resources

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prosopagnosia#:~:text=medical,an%20inability%20to%20recognize%20faces

https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/All-Disorders/Prosopagnosia-Information-Page#:~:text=Prosopagnosia%20is%20a%20neurological%20disorder,face%20blindness%20or%20facial%20agnosia.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eyebomb-your-brain/https://www.health.com/condition/neurological-disorders/face-blindness

https://time.com/4838661/prosopagnosia-face-blindness/

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/face-blindness/#:~:text=Several%20studies%20have%20indicated%20that,the%20ability%20to%20recognise%20faces.

https://healthland.time.com/2010/10/22/mind-reading-what-its-like-when-you-cant-recognize-anyone/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/benton-facial-recognition-test

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38083260_The_Warrington_Recognition_Memory_Test_for_Words_as_a_Measure_of_Response_Bias_Total_Score_and_Response_Time_Cutoffs_Developed_on_Real_World_Credible_and_Noncredible_Subjects

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/fusiform-gyrus