BDC #14 - Prosopagnosia: Have you ever heard it before?

I was surfing in the internet for some news about my country, and I bumped with a very interesting article. 

Have you ever heard Prosopagnosia before? Uhuh, me neither, well at least, until today. Now, what is it actually?

Prosopagnosia came from Greek, consists of prosopon (πρόσωπον) means face; and agnosia (αγνωσία) means not knowing. It is a brain disorder of face perception where the ability recognize face is impaired, while the other aspects of visual processing and intellectual processing remain intact. In short, it means the disability to recognize faces, or face blindness.   

The term prosopagnosia was first used in 1947 by Joachim Bodamer, a German neurologist. He described three cases, including a 24-year-old man who suffered a bullet wound to the head and lost his ability to recognize his friends, family, and even his own face. However, he was able to recognize and identify them through other sensory modalities such as auditory, tactile, and even other visual stimuli patterns. 

Up to know; there are at least 3 types of prosopagnosia:

1. Apperceptive

People with this disorder cannot make any sense of faces and are unable to make same-different judgments when they are presented with pictures of different faces. In other words, they couldn't recognize both familiar and unfamiliar faces. However, they may be able to recognize people based on non-face clues such as their clothing, hairstyle or voice.

2. Associative

People with this disorder might be able to say whether photos of people's faces are the same or different and derive the age and sex from a face, which suggests that at least they can extract some information and distinguish some features on the faces. However, they may not be able to subsequently identify the person or provide any information about them; such as their name, occupation, or when they were last encountered.

 

3. Developmental 

is a face-recognition deficit that is lifelong, manifesting in early childhood, and that cannot be attributed to acquired brain damage. It is suspected as a “hereditary prosopagnosia”. Developmental prosopagnosia can be a difficult thing for a child to both understand and cope with. They may have a hard time making friends, as they might not be able to actually recognize their classmates' faces and often make friends with other children with other distinguishing features.

If you are interested to find out more, try this link. Or if you would like to read some true stories? OR want to test your own self? 

Anyway, don't stop learning something new!!! ^^