
Prosopagnosia: The artist in search of her face - vijayr02
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53192821
======
thrw23802
I've had a milder form of this condition my entire life but only really
acknowledged it a few years ago when starting a new job.

The main effect of this is that I am simply uncertain of the identity of those
I encounter. A simple change in context, like a change of hair color or
meeting somebody in a different setting, is enough to render them anonymous to
me. There have been some deeply shameful moments... the researcher in another
department who went out of her way to engage with me, until I mistook her for
somebody else for an entire elevator ride. The student I ran into downtown who
was hurt because his prof couldn't recall basic details of his project - I
literally did not know who he was on account of his bike helmet, despite
having in him in class not even a day before. Once as a child I backed away in
fear from the dinner table when a stranger took my father's seat. All he had
done was remove his 1980's mustache.

99% of the time this condition is invisible even to me. A normal work routine
ensures that I only meet people in the places I expect them. I would never,
ever mistake my wife for a hat. But if she turned up in an unexpected place, I
fear I would walk right past her. And if I meet new people in rapid
succession, I have almost no hope of recall unless they have conspicuous
features like jewelry, tattoos or expressive hair. Art receptions are
generally a breeze. Tech conferences are the worst.

Assuming we ever get to work in close quarters again, try guessing at the
identity of your co-workers from behind. Almost always you'll be positive whom
you're looking at. But not every time. For most people, it would be enough for
the subject to turn around and provide a clear view of their face. For those
with face blindness, even that may not resolve the ambiguity. Now imagine
repeating this exercise at the supermarket, where you cannot expect any
particular person to be present, and you can get a sense of the anxiety this
condition can cause.

~~~
tokamak-teapot
I stood and talked to someone for about ten minutes once before I realised he
wasn’t the person I thought. I thought he was the father of my then partner,
but it turned out he was an old teacher I’d had. In that particular meeting, I
think I got away with it, but there have been times where I haven’t.

I have such trouble with recognising faces - including knowing I know them -
but mistaking them for someone else - that I have to actively check myself
before I engage with people who I’m not very familiar with.

So if you know me but don’t see me often, if you bump into me and find the
conversation seems awfully generic, sorry about that.

One thing I’ve learned is that a person’s voice is much easier for me to
recognise. This means I try to exchange pleasantries - even with people I know
well enough that I should recognise them. I hope it comes across as friendly
and jovial - which it is - but I also need the interaction to jog my memory.

------
smohnot
I dated someone who had prosopagnosia. She didn't know that she had it until
she was in college on a trip to South East Asia, and she ran into her sister
in a market in Malaysia and didn't recognize her sister! She normally can
recognize people but uses other cues and the fact that they were in Malaysia
meant she wasn't ready for it.

When we first started dating, I had a beard. The day I shaved it off, we met
up for dinner at a restaurant, and I'd sat down while waiting for her. She
arrived at the restaurant and scanned for quite a bit and didn't recognize me
until I waved.

The brain is quite an interesting thing. If you like these stories, check out
Oliver Sacks book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat)

~~~
sixhobbits
Did she have troubles following movie/TV series plots? I also lived with
exactly what you describe for years before realising it had a name, and
looking back the strongest indication was finding it far more difficult than
others to follow movies, especially if they switch between different story
lines.

The Departed [0] was probably the strongest example as Leonardo di Caprio and
Matt Daemon look fairly similar anyway so I was super confused for most of it.

Once I've seen someone 5-6 times it gets easier to recognise them, but it's
always awkward if I meet new people in crowded situations and then "lose" them
again and have to wait for them to initiate a conversation before I know who
I'm supposed to be with.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Departed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Departed)

~~~
Darthy
Wouldn’t a custom subtitle track just for people with Prosopagnosia help? Like
every time a character appears, show her/his name for 5 seconds. If there
isn’t already a subculture that creates fan-made subtitle tracks, we should
create one.

~~~
vijayr02
A great idea! BTW Amazon video do something similar through their X-Ray
feature with cast details depending on who is on screen.

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catmistake
I have prosopagnosia. I only learned what to call it about 5 years ago. But it
is not total and complete. I recognize faces when I see someone I know where I
have seen them before. But if I see someone I know in a new location I have
never seen them, I do not initially recognize them. But as soon as they speak
to me, and I hear their voice, suddenly I recognize them. One of my earliest
memories when I was in elementary school, first grade, is being with my mother
at the Kmart. I was upset because I wanted to go home, and she had this long
conversation with someone, seemed like almost an hour, which I found
excrutiating. I did not know who she was talking to. When we left, I
complained, "who was that person?" My mother gasped, "catmistake! [not my real
name] That was your homeroom teacher! You see her every morning in school!" I
could not believe it. I knew this woman well. I think I may have been in love
with her. Just recently, in a gas station I see this guy shaking hands with
someone else, not 6 feet away, full view. He looked interesting, but I didn't
know him until he walked up to me, "hey catmistake." It was my friend that I
was staying with for the previous two months, knew for 20 years, that I had
just seen about a half hour before at his house. It is freaky, going from
seeing someone as a complete stranger and then suddenly recognizing them. It
is difficult to explain the transition. I had balance problems as a child, and
fell down the hardwood stairs on my head nearly every day until I figured out
how to lean back when stepping forward. So I think it is permanent brain
damage causing it. Doesn't get me down, but I have been abused for it,
"friends," that are aware of it, know when to expect it, and screwing with me.
Jerks.

~~~
epc
I learned I had a mild form when I was about 40, though I had symptoms dating
back to college. Mine is sort of the inverse of yours: I will see someone, I
know for certain that I’m supposed to know who they are, but draw a complete
blank. Like the instant of recognition wipes my memory. Only happens with
people who I encounter out of whatever the normal place would be. e.g. I ran
into a former roommate at an airport. Knew I was supposed to know who she was
but drew a complete blank (luckily, as a former roommate she knew I had this
problem).

------
SommaRaikkonen
First time I knew about Prosopagnosia was from playing 999 on the DS. From
that point on I haven't bumped into any articles about it until today (I never
looked too hard into it).

Here's the sentence I liked most in the article though: "Prosopagnosia can't
be treated - if neural connections are not established, they can't be created
afterwards." That's pretty disheartening.

~~~
rikroots
The woman in the article seems to have a pretty severe form of the condition.
Most sufferers will work out coping strategies (in my case: voice, shape, gait
- I have an advantage over most people when it comes to recognising people in
the distance, or with their back to me) very early on in life so that social
discomfort can be minimised. A lot of us are also very good listeners, with a
list of question prompts to keep the other person talking in the hope they'll
say something that triggers a memory association.

People do still consider me to be rude and 'stuck-up' when I ignore them in
the street - but I can live with that.

------
munificent
I have, like, the opposite of this. I have an absolutely _excellent_ face
memory. I subjectively experience this as a separate unconscious bit of data
that automatically appears in my mind when I look at someone: true if I've
ever seen them before, false otherwise. I think most people have that same
natural "ah-ha" or natural moment of recognition. For me, it seems to be
stronger than most, based on a couple of online facial memory tests.

A weird side effect of this is that over the years I have often recognized
people I'd who clearly didn't recognize me. In order to not embarrass them by
remembering them when they don't recall me, I've unintentionally adopted the
habit of waiting until I see a hint of recognition from others before I
respond in kind. Brains are weird.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
You're a super recogniser
([https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=Prosopagnosia%20%22super%...](https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=Prosopagnosia%20%22super%20recognisers%22)).

I wouldn't mind a bit of what you've got.

~~~
munificent
I would happily trade it in for a better sense of direction. If it wasn't for
Google Maps, I would never be able to get anywhere.

~~~
dsego
I also have a bad sense of direction and I had to learn not rely on my
intuition/sense and instead to look for landmarks and other cues. Sometimes an
area looks familiar but really isn't or I'm actually going the opposite way of
where I'm supposed to.

~~~
munificent
I do that too, but my brain isn't good at rotating large objects in 3D space
(small ones are fine). So if I go through a familiar intersection in a
different direction, I won't recognize it. Landmarks coming from another
direction look different to me. :-/

------
OJFord
I had a flatmate with this (or a similar condition, wouldn't have remembered
the name). He'd know who I was in the context of our flat, but then blank me
if I saw him on campus, where we were on different courses and didn't run into
each other often.

... Heh, at least, he _said_ he did..!

~~~
katmannthree
> ... Heh, at least, he said he did..!

He may have maybe thought he saw you a few times but only once (or never) was
it actually you. It's a difficult condition.

As someone who has it, you learn to be cautious about "partial matches" where
you recognize some elements of someone (backpack, waterbottle, gait, voice,
hair style, etc) but aren't 100% sure. It's pretty embarrassing to realize
that the person you just started talking to in fact is not your friend but
just has the same jacket.

------
4ec0755f5522
For me, the core is not that you can't "recognize" a face, it's that it is
very very hard to form a memory of a face. It's not in the storage, it's in
the retrieval.

For example, if I try to picture a person's face, even someone I know well,
it's kind of fuzzy. It is hard to describe, but again, it's more like you
can't quite remember a face, more than you can't recognize a face.

So, I put faces together into mini-shapes. Nose-shape, hair-shape, eye-shape,
teeth shape (how I recognize Kathereine Heigl), etc. I can't put together a
whole face into memory, but I can group these mini-shapes, features, etc. into
a "faceprint" of sorts.

The main thing I use though is sound/voice. I can recognize voices to an
extremely precise degree, all the time in shows/movies, I can recognize actors
in costume, full masks, animated movies, etc. without problem. I am sometimes
fooled, actually, by people with similar voices, and I'm always saying "these
people sound so much alike they should be cast as twins" to which everyone of
course thinks I am crazy.

(Orphan Black is an exception because the lead in that show changes her voice
with the different characters so it keeps me guessing).

~~~
dsego
Interesting, I'm not impaired afaik but I don't really remember face
characteristic if I don't make an effort, apart from really obvious things of
course (couldn't draw the from memory). But I still immediately recognize a
face (well most of the time). It's like seeing a color and knowing it's blue,
it requires zero effort, you just know. I'm guessing having perfect pitch is
something like this, just that it's not that ordinary. It does happen that
after a long time you see someone familiar but not recognize them.

------
256lie
Reminds me of one of Ted Chiang's short stories where they can't recognize
attractive faces.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50550973-liking-what-
you...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50550973-liking-what-you-see)

------
Kaze404
Prosopagnosia plays an interesting part in my favorite game 999 (from the Zero
Escape series). It's a great game for anyone who enjoys philosophy, horror and
pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo.

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pfdietz
I know a well known artist/fantasy author/children's author who has this.

