Prosopagnosia / Prosopometamorphopsia
Prosopagnosia
Will you easily recognise your family members if they would change their
hairstyle? Would you easily recognise a friend if you
accidently met her in the post office? Some people will not. These
individuals find the task of recognising other people just by looking at their
face extremely difficult. Thus, in order to recognise familiar people, they
will rely on such features as the voice, hairstyle, and clothing items, or on
contextual information. Neurologists call this face blindness PROSOPAGNOSIA. Prosopagnosia is a relatively rare condition and may result
from stroke or brain injury. Nevertheless, in some cases, prosopagnosia
can occur with no apparent neural damage and be present from early childhood
(just as in the case of dyslexia). We refer to this condition as congenital prosopagnosia or developmental prosopagnosia.
Prosopometamorphopsia
As noted above, prosopagnosia can
sometimes occur after brain damage. This can result in poor performance on face
recognition tests, but it can also results in distortions of the seen face
image. Suprisingly, in very few studies patients have
been asked what faces actually look like. Do faces appear distorted in any way?
When faces appear distorted, we call it prosopometamorphopsia.
Some examples of distortion include: (1) The face or a part of it constantly
appear distorted (2) Episodes in which patients
might see the wrong face on people's heads. Needless to say, this can be a
rather frightning experience for patients. We are
trying to understand this condition and would like to hear from you if you experience(d) this.
Participate in Research
If you are available to take part in research in London or
West London, UK, please let us know.
For quick screening, please see Brad Duchaine’s
website:
http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/index.php
If you have done these tests, we strongly recommend
that you keep a record of your score.
Please note: We could share our findings with
you. However, we cannot offer medical advice. If you are concerned about any
cognitive, perceptual or motor problem, you should talk to your doctor.
Some
Links
Brad
Duchaine's Prosopagnosia
Research Page (faceblind.org)
Bill's Face Blindness!
Shlomo
Benin's Cognitive Electrophysiology Laboratory
Daphne
Maurer's Visual Development Lab
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