No Face Like Home

MSNBC Story on Super-Recognizers

2009-05-29T10:16:00.001-05:00

Some people never forget a face - Behavior

MSNBC.com

Some people never forget a face

'Super-recognizers' have uncanny ability to remember everyone they meet

By Elizabeth Fernandez

msnbc.com contributor

updated 8:27 a.m. ET, Thurs., May 28, 2009

We've all had that sinking feeling: a person seems familiar, someone we might have once met, but somehow we just can't place the face.

Not Jennifer Jarett. She never forgets a face. Not even someone she met for just a moment, not even decades later.

Jarett is a "super-recognizer,'' a freshly minted term for an elite group of people who are exceptional at remembering faces.

"It's sort of a weird thing to be able to do,'' says Jarett, 38, a Manhattan resident who works as a city employee. "My friends refer to me as their memory. People's faces don't really change to me, even people from my childhood. It's as if they are cemented in my brain.''

Psychologists at Harvard University have discovered that Jarett shares her special knack with others, establishing for the first time that some people have superior skills at face recognition.

From face blind to super-vision
New research shows that there's a broad range of face-recognition ability, a spectrum ranging from the "face blind'' to those on the opposite end with superior powers of perception.

"Super-recognizers actually see faces differently,'' says Dr. Richard Russell, a researcher in the Harvard Vision Sciences Laboratory and lead author of the new study published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. "They can recognize people out of context, people who aren't important to them, people who they may have met only briefly.''

Russell and his colleagues were investigating developmental prosopagnosia, a condition in which people have normal vision but are unable to recognize faces, even those of close relatives — an estimated 2 percent of the general population has exceptionally poor face-recognition ability.

Amid the research, the scientists were contacted by Jarett and several others claiming to have stellar recognition abilities.

Intrigued, the scientists concocted a battery of difficult tests. One, called Before They Were Famous, required the subjects to identify famous individuals as children. All four test subjects passed the experiments with high marks.

"My boyfriend called me a freak of nature,'' says Christine Erickson, 42, a stay-at-home mother of two in Boston, one of the super-recognizers. Erickson once had a chance encounter with a woman who years earlier had been her waitress.

"She had transformed from being an edgy-looking urban hipster to having long hair and looking completely different,'' says Erickson. "I flipped through my mental files and recognized her.''

Super-recognizer or, um, stalker?
To their chagrin, super-recognizers have learned that their special gifts are not always appreciated.

"People sometimes give me strange looks, like I was stalking them,'' says Jarett.

Riding the subway about a year ago, she recognized a man who once worked for her hairdresser.

"I said 'You were Barry's assistant.' He looked at me funny — it had been five years. So I said 'Oh, the reason I remember you is because you did such a good job blowing out my hair.' He seemed really flattered.''

Jarett hasn't found any particular use for her skill, but the study says benefits might surface. For instance, airport security employees could be screened for their ability to recognize faces, and eyewitnesses to crimes could similarly be assessed.

Tips for ordinary folks
For people with average ability, Dr. Jim Tanaka, a professor of psychology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, who is not connected with the new study, offers a few tips to enhance recognition.

"Pay close attention to the dynamics of the face — the movement, the expressions, the different angles,'' says Tanaka, who studies cognitive and neurological processes underlying face recognition.

Also, he says, put less emphasis on superficial cues that can change over time, such as hairstyles and eyeglasses.

"Try to remember the structural aspects of the face instead of incidental surface features,'' he says. "Don't focus too much on details, but rather form an overall, holistic impression of a person's face.''

As for Jarett, she's thrilled with her new scientific designation.

"My friends and I joke that I should get a cape with a big S on it,'' she says. "When I was little, I always wanted to have super powers. Now I'm finally getting to fulfill my childhood dream.''

Elizabeth Fernandez is a writer based in San Francisco.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30945729/

MSN Privacy . Legal

New Topographical Agnosia Group

2009-05-24T09:21:00.004-05:00

Since many of us with Prosopagnosia also have topographagnosia, ot Topographica Agnosia, or Topographical Agnosia, or Navigational Agnosia, or Topographical Disorientation (let's jsut call it TA, alright?), I decided to start a Yahoo Group where we could discuss are trials and tribulations of living with TA. Feel free to join the group and join the discussion.

It would be nice to create a number of real-life stories there, so people who are looking to diagnose themselves could go there, read, and become more familiar with the condition.

If you would like to subscribe, send an email here:
PlaceBlind-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Please indicate why you are interested in subscribing.
You can find the group under the name Topographical Agnosia.

'Super-recognizers - Opposite of Prosopagnosics?

2009-05-21T12:54:00.001-05:00

'Super-recognizers,' with extraordinary face recognition ability, never forget a face

this link from EurekaAlert!

Contact: Amy Lavoie
amy_lavoie@harvard.edu
617-496-9982
Harvard University

'Super-recognizers,' with extraordinary face recognition ability, never forget a face

Research suggests that face recognition may vary more than previously understood

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 19, 2009 – Some people say they never forget a face, a claim now bolstered by psychologists at Harvard University who've discovered a group they call "super-recognizers": those who can easily recognize someone they met in passing, even many years later.

The new study suggests that skill in facial recognition might vary widely among humans. Previous research has identified as much as 2 percent of the population as having "face-blindness," or prosopagnosia, a condition characterized by great difficulty in recognizing faces. For the first time, this new research shows that others excel in face recognition, indicating that the trait could be on a spectrum, with prosopagnosics on the low end and super-recognizers at the high end.

The research is published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, and was led by Richard Russell, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at Harvard, with co-authors Ken Nakayama, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard, and Brad Duchaine of the University College London.

The research involved administering standardized face recognition tests. The super-recognizers scored far above average on these tests—higher than any of the normal control subjects.

"There has been a default assumption that there is either normal face recognition, or there is disordered face recognition," says Russell. "This suggests that's not the case, that there is actually a very wide range of ability. It suggests a different model—a different way of thinking about face recognition ability, and possibly even other aspects of perception, in terms of a spectrum of abilities, rather than there being normal and disordered ability."

Super-recognizers report that they recognize other people far more often than they are recognized. For this reason, says Russell, they often compensate by pretending not to recognize someone they met in passing, so as to avoid appearing to attribute undue importance to a fleeting encounter.

"Super-recognizers have these extreme stories of recognizing people," says Russell. "They recognize a person who was shopping in the same store with them two months ago, for example, even if they didn't speak to the person. It doesn't have to be a significant interaction; they really stand out in terms of their ability to remember the people who were actually less significant."

One woman in the study said she had identified another woman on the street who served as her as a waitress five years earlier in a different city. Critically, she was able to confirm that the other woman had in fact been a waitress in the different city. Often, super-recognizers are able to recognize another person despite significant changes in appearance, such as aging or a different hair color.

If face recognition abilities do vary, testing for this may be important for assessing eyewitness testimony, or for interviewing for some jobs, such as security or those checking identification.

Russell theorizes that super-recognizers and those with face-blindness may only be distinguishable today because our communities differ from how they existed thousands of years ago.

"Until recently, most humans lived in much smaller communities, with many fewer people interacting on a regular basis within a group," says Russell. "It may be a fairly new phenomenon that there's even a need to recognize large numbers of people."

###

The research was funded by the U.S. National Eye Institute and the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council.

Radio Program touches on Faceblindness

2009-03-23T22:18:00.001-05:00

Something You Should Know radio program - The Crazy Things People Do

Transcripts

August 8, 2008
The Crazy Things People Do
Interview with Andrew Williams, author of Are You Crazy?

Mike Carruthers:
People are weird. So many people do so many weird things that maybe being weird is normal. For example, do you know a lot of people suffer from something called face blindness?

Andrew Williams:
Approximately 5 million Americans are believed to suffer with face blindness. And face blindness is the inability to recognize people from their faces.

Andrew Williams, author of the book Are You Crazy?...

Individuals who have this cannot recognize their children, their spouses, people they work with; and those people who have it often report that if they stand on their head and look at faces upside-down, it's easier for them to recognize the individual.

It just may be that we all have something weird about us so maybe we need to be a little more understanding of people who have things like face blindness . . .

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.

--
dori

646-734-5211

Condition That Makes Prosopagnosia Even More Difficult

2008-11-05T11:52:00.001-05:00

Prosopagnosia Radio interview: "There was an interview on BBC today (Monday 27th) - Brad Duchaine talking about phonagnosia......

Hear it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/pm/

It's about 45 mins into the programme."
Scroll the circular indicator to 41 minutes; the interview ends at around 46 minutes.

The story is about a woman who can't distinguish voices so she can't identify people
she knows by their voice. Brad Duchaine was interviewed

Taxi drivers 'have brain sat-nav'

2008-09-15T06:49:00.002-05:00

Here is an article of interest from BBC News website for those with Topographic Agnosia, an orientation disorder which often appears in people who have prosopagnosia.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Taxi drivers 'have brain sat-nav': "Taxi drivers 'have brain sat-nav'
By Elizabeth Mitchell
Science reporter, BBC News

Sid James in a London cab (BBC)
The knowledge: London cabbies are famous for knowing their way around

Scientists have uncovered evidence for an inbuilt 'sat-nav' system in the brains of London taxi drivers.

They used magnetic scanners to explore the brain activity of taxi drivers as they navigated their way through a virtual simulation of London's streets.

Different brain regions were activated as they considered route options, spotted familiar landmarks or thought about their customers.

The research was presented at this week's BA Science Festival.

Earlier studies had shown that taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus - a region of the brain that plays an important role in navigation.

Their brains even 'grow on the job' as they build up detailed information needed to find their way around London's labyrinth of streets - information famously referred to as 'The Knowledge'.

'We were keen to go beyond brain structure - and see what activity is going on inside the brains of taxi drivers while they are doing their job,' said Dr Hugo Spiers from University College London.

Taxi driver's brain
(click on diagram to enlarge)

The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to obtain 'minute by minute' brain images from 20 taxi drivers as they delivered customers to destinations on "virtual jobs".

The scientists adapted the Playstation2 game "Getaway" to bring the streets of London into the scanner.

After the scan - and without prior warning - the drivers watched a replay of their performance and reported what they had been thinking at each stage.

"We tried to peel out the common thoughts that taxi drivers tend to have as they drive through the city, and then tie them down to a particular time and place," said Dr Spiers.

The series of scans revealed a complex choreography of brain activity as the taxi drivers responded to different scenarios.

The hippocampus was only active when the taxi drivers initially planned their route, or if they had to completely change their destination during the course of the journey.

The scientists saw activity in a different brain region when the drivers came across an unexpected situation - for example, a blocked-off junction.

Another part of the brain helped taxi drivers to track how close they were to the endpoint of their journey; like a metal detector, its activity increased when they were closer to their goal.

Changes also occurred in brain regions that are important in social behaviour.

Taxi driving is not just about navigation: "Drivers do obsess occasionally about what their customers are thinking," said Dr Spiers.

Animals use a number of different mechanisms to navigate - the Sun's polarized light rays, the Earth's magnetic fields and the position of the stars.

This research provides new information about the specific roles of areas within the brains of expert human navigators.

"Something You Should Know" - Mentions Faceblindness

2008-08-11T06:36:00.001-05:00

Transcript from radio show "Something You Should Know" with Mike Carruthers

August 8, 2008
The Crazy Things People Do
Interview with Andrew Williams, author of Are You Crazy?

Mike Carruthers:
People are weird. So many people do so many weird things that maybe being weird is normal. For example, do you know a lot of people suffer from something called face blindness?

Andrew Williams:
Approximately 5 million Americans are believed to suffer with face blindness. And face blindness is the inability to recognize people from their faces.

Andrew Williams, author of the book Are You Crazy?...

It just may be that we all have something weird about us so maybe we need to be a little more understanding of people who have things like face blindness or something called pica.

Pica, or P I C A, this is eating foods that are not usually food items: coins, ash, cigarette butts, soap and coffee grounds.

It often starts in childhood, says Andrew, when kids start putting strange things in their mouths and an extreme case of pica…

It happened just last year where a 62-year-old man went to the emergency room because he had a total of 360 coins in his stomach.

And speaking of eating things…

There are individuals who are afraid to eat what they refer to as concealed food. And that is food that they can't see the inside of. So something like ravioli, they would be afraid to eat it because they don't know what's inside.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet » Blog Archive » Face Blindness

2008-01-04T12:25:00.000-05:00

Follow this link for a video of the Prosopagnosia segment this morning (Jan 5th) on this FOX morning show. Much longer segment than I usually see. They did a good job letting the people with prosopagnosia try and explain what it is like and how they cope. Brad Duchaine provided the credibility, being one of the top researchers in this field It is so exciting to see this kind of mainstream coverage!

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet » Blog Archive » Face Blindness: "Videos » Health »

*
Face Blindness
*

Can you imagine a world where you never see a single familiar face? M&J take an in-depth look at a medical condition whose sufferers can’t recognize other people — including their own children!

For more on this topic, visit http://www.faceblind.org"

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet

2008-01-04T07:34:00.000-05:00

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet

There will be a feature on prosopagnosia today on this FOX morning show.

Brad Duchaine the well known London Prosopagnosia researcher, will be on the show around 9am, live via satellite from L.A. In the New York Studio, there will be a handfull of prosopagnosics to discuss their condition with the hosts. More media coverage to spread the word!

UK Mirror Prosopagnosia Article

2007-11-26T13:35:00.000-05:00

Everyone looks the same to me

By Kelly Strange 09/11/2007

"The hall was booked and the invitations sent out. Mary Ann Sieghart and her husband David had been looking forward to their joint birthday party for months.

But as the day drew nearer they started to dread the event. Though many of the 200 guests had been friends or colleagues for years, Mary Ann knew she had little chance of recognising anyone except her immediate family.

And she couldn't rely on husband David for help as, incredibly, he also suffers from the same rare condition that means they can't distinguish one person from another by their faces.

Prosopagnosis, which means they are both face blind, has also hit the couple's daughter Evie, 16, and Mary Ann's mum, Felicity Ann. Their other daughter, Rosa, 14, is unaffected.

Remarkably, Mary Ann even held down a high-powered job on a national newspaper.

She says: "It's a great source of social embarrassment as I just can't remember if I know that person and if I do, where I might know them from.

"Of course, we knew everybody who was coming to our party but, out of context, we knew we'd have no chance of working out who they were and we couldn't even help each other."

The couple eventually spent most of the night last August trying to memorise what each guest was wearing so they could remember who was who for the evening.

"I can usually cope by bluffing my way through but, of course, with so many people that was always going to be difficult," says David, 55.

And it's typical of the way the condition affects the family's daily lives. "We've always been useless at parties and usually spend the whole evening whispering 'who was that?' to each other so you can imagine how nervous we were holding our own," says Mary Ann, 46.

"My daughter even joked that we should all have T-shirts saying 'Don't blame me, I'm prosopagnosic' to get us out of tricky social situations.

"It's awful when people think you're being rude by not recognising them even though you might see them every day."

Mary Ann first became aware of it when she was eight. Reading her favourite Enid Blyton adventures she was amazed by the way the children were able to give such accurate descriptions of the baddies to the police.

"I remember thinking I wouldn't know where to start and I certainly wouldn't be able to recognise them," she says.

Her mother had also been terrible with faces and the pair often joked that Mary Ann must take after her.

Then, as a teenager watching movies, Mary Ann realised she was struggling to keep up with the plots because she couldn't tell one character from another.

She says: "Me and my brother watched a film with Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.

When it had finished he asked me which character was which and I had to confess that I didn't have a clue.

"Both were good-looking with blue eyes so there was nothing to help me tell one from the other."

Again, Mary Ann and her family just put it down to her being bad with faces, the way some people are with names. But things got even harder when she went to university.

Each day brought a sea of new faces and Mary Ann was constantly apologising for not knowing people, even though she'd already met them several times.

"I felt so guilty for having to keep asking somebody their name and who they were when they clearly already knew me," she says. "Some people thought I was lazy or uninterested but nothing could have been further from the truth."

Slowly she started to remember the names of her friends, relying on things like the colour of their bag, the length of their hair and the style of their glasses. Of course, that meant she'd be back to square one again if that person changed their appearance. "If a friend had their hair cut I could easily pass them in the street and not have a clue who they were," she says.

It was even harder if a person had symmetrical features, as a big nose or wonky ears helped trigger her recognition. So Mary Ann developed strategies that would help her learn a person's name without having to offend them by asking again. "If I was standing with one person I couldn't remember and then another approached that I also didn't recognise I would invite them to introduce themselves to each other, which would give me both their names."

In 1986 Mary Ann was introduced to David. One of the many things they had in common was that he was also "bad with faces".

"I'd always thought I just had a bad memory," explains David. And when they married in 1989, David joked that they should ask their guests to wear name badges.

The couple couldn't even do normal things like watch films - Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise look identical to them.

Even when their eldest daughter Evie started to show signs of being unable to recognise patterns aged seven, the couple still assumed it was just one of those things. Mary Ann's mum had been the same and now it seemed their daughter would be too.

Her teacher suggested Evie see a educational psychologist who was shocked when she struggled to put together a six-piece puzzle of a human face. But still she wasn't diagnosed.

She had problems recognising friends, too. "Once she told me she'd met a nice friend, she didn't know her name or what she looked like, only that she wore a red jumper," says Mary Ann.

"I had to point out that the girl might not wear a red jumper every day so Evie had to work out another way of recognising her."

Then in July last year Mary Ann read an article about prosopagnosis.

Amazed, she realised she had all of the symptoms, as did her husband, daughter and mother.

"I was so excited. I knew instantly that there was no question I had this condition. I wasn't forgetful, I wasn't uninterested, I had a real medical condition," she says.

She volunteered to be tested by a professor researching prosopagnosis at University College London. A series of tests confirmed that Mary Ann was indeed prosopagnosic.

"It was a relief to be officially told that the problem was not my fault," she says. Shortly afterwards Evie, David and Felicity Ann were also diagnosed with the same condition.

Felicity Ann, 80, was delighted to have a diagnosis after so many years and now suspects her father had the condition too.

She says: "Back in my childhood people weren't interested in a problem unless you were in pain.

"It was an enormous effort to try and hide that I didn't know who I was talking to, especially at work.

"Even now I find it easier to smile at everybody I meet, that way I can't offend somebody by not knowing them."

But luckily nobody in the family has the most severe form of the condition, which leaves sufferers unable to identify members of their own family or even themselves in the mirror.

Scientists are still trying to discover why the area of the brain that processes faces has not developed in prosopagnosics.

But, knowing they have a neurological problem is enough for the family as they can now confidently explain away why they can't recognise a friend or colleague.

David, who is less severely affected, still prefers to bluff his way through introductions as explaining the unusual condition is simply too complicated.

But Mary Ann says: "At last I can tell people I'm not being rude and ask them not to be offended, though sadly some still are. I find this particularly difficult. Perhaps we will take up Evie's T-shirt idea after all."

My Brilliant Brain: Make Me A Genius, is on National Geographic Channel this Sunday at 8pm."

I loved this article, because it gives that many more people an idea of what it is like to have Prosopagnosia. The more people know, the less I have to explain:)

I too could never tell Paul Newman and Steve McQueen apart.

This article is from www.Mirror.co.uk

The Faceblind View: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

2007-07-27T22:54:00.000-05:00

Andrea, over at Faceblind View (movie and television reviews from a prosopagnosic perspective) just posted her review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Its the latest in the Harry Potter movie series.

The Faceblind View: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (in IMax 3D!): "Being such a huge Harry Potter fan, it's hard for me to tell how easy the characters of the latest installment would be to tell apart. I mean, I've read this book twice, I've seen all the other movies and read the books, and therefore I know what's going to happen. I know who should be doing what.

If this describes you too, you won't have any trouble with this movie. The one time I had even a speck of face trouble was a moment when Hermione was standing next to Harry in the room of requirement and she had her bushy hair pulled back. I didn't realize it was her until she talked. But it wasn't important to the plot."

Strangely enough, the one spot I remember having trouble identifying someone in the movie was nearly the same as the one Andrea had trouble with. Hermione was standing in the room of requirements, facing another student who was supposed to practice casting a spell on her. She had been in the room in a few different shots, but when I suddenly saw her alone standing opposite the other student, I didn't recognize that it was her. I asked G "who is that girl?". I did not realize why at the time, but I guess it must have been the hair?

Follow the link to Faceblind View to read the great description of all the characters, plus a review of the 3-D effects available when you see The Order of the Phoenix at an IMax theater. I especially recommend PA's read it before seeing the movie if they have not read the book.

Face to Face Networking Takes On a Whole New Meaning

2007-07-16T13:47:00.000-05:00

This post by Andrea gives insight into some of the extra effort a prosopagnosic goes through at work trying to avoid social missteps.

Social Captioning « Andrea’s Buzzing About:

The primary problem of being faceblind is not only do I not recognise people — rather, I have to consciously identify them — but that my abilities to do so fade over time, so people whom I used to be able to figure out will become strangers again for lack of regular contact. The secondary, and somewhat insidious part of being faceblind is that it plays hell with “networking”. I never know as many of my coworkers or peers when I am around them, and cannot keep track of them later on as useful contacts.

When I interview for jobs, talk to people at conferences, or attend meetings it is profoundly difficult for me to remember with whom I spoke, even though I write down names and titles. I’ve tried taking down covert notes, like “Mr M: mustache, coördinates program, office 2nd floor”. But then later on I find that knowing Mr M has a mustache isn’t useful, because later on I will be around two more mustached guys of the same “type” who are all in the same environment, and that I never talk with Mr M in his office on the 2nd floor. I will later come to know Mr M by the particular shape of his balding pate and the way he wears his mobile phone on his belt, but when I am taking those notes, those are not the features that are first noticeable.

There’s also a Ms B at the meeting, but I won’t know until a month later that she was the one whom I really needed to “map” out as a contact. Yet another month more after that realisation, I will finally ascertain that she was one of the people with whom I chatted at that initial meeting. Making that important connection required a lot of careful analysis, drawing connections and ruling out confounds between dissimilar data sets, as though I am playing a particularly difficult level of Sudoku involving personnel instead of numbers. In a Sudoku game, there’s always a ninth that has just a couple of numbers provided, so it’s the square with the numbers that are filled in last, through pains-taking analyses of extensive subsets of if-then algorithms.

Its a very thoughtful post and the puzzle analogy is spot on. I also feel like I am always trying to fit together pieces of a puzzle.

Are You Prosopagnosic? A list of questions to help you tell.

2007-07-16T12:14:00.000-05:00

This is a link from a story in the Boston Globe a year ago. It is interesting to read the questions that have been developed to help recognize if someone is prosopagnosic. Kind of an initial screening you can try on yourself. Would you have trouble answering these questions affirmatively?

Identifying face-blindness - The Boston Globe:
June 14, 2006

Some questions used to determine whether someone may have prosopagnosia:

Would you have problems finding your party's table in a restaurant?

Would you recognize a famous actor or politician, if you saw him or her unexpectedly in the street or in a restaurant?

If somebody looked into your office, asked a questions and left, would you be able to recognize him or her some minutes later in a group of people?

At larger functions or parties, do you talk to someone for a couple of minutes and then find you can't remember his or her face a few minutes later?

Picture yourself in mall or at the airport: If someone you don't recognize greets you and starts talking to you in a very familiar way, what do you do? (Typical answer from someone who has trouble recognizing faces: I would try to find out from his or her voice and from the subjects discussed, who he or she might be.)
SOURCE: Thomas Grüter

Follow the link for an additional list of resources.

"2 Crabs" Blogger Realizes He Is Faceblind

2007-07-12T12:44:00.000-05:00

Another one! Found this blogger talking about his realization that he is probably prosopagnosic after viewing Good Morning America's Pa piece. Many people know that something is not right with them, but seeing a story like this helps them finally put a name to it. Judging from the way Mr. Crabs describes his problem, it sounds like he definitely is prosopagnosic.

2 Crabs: The Absent-Minded Expat

Although I've always had a pretty decent memory, I've never been good at recognizing or remembering names and faces. I'm a complete blank. Everyone looks exactly the same to me. I'm a complete blank with faces, not a good thing when you're a journalist. Occasionally, somebody will come up to me on the street and say "Oh, hello Mr. Crab!" and launch into a conversation, while I'm standing there smiling, listening, and thinking to myself, "Who the HELL is this person!?!?" When I'm with Mrs. Crab, it's a bit easier because I can flash her a silent, inquisitive look as if to say, "Throw me a bone -- who is this and how do we know him/her?," at which point she'll insert a clue or two into the next sentence.

Turns out there is actually a medical condition for this problem with the really original name of " Faceblindness." The scientific name is prosopagnosia. I think I may have a less severe version of this memory impairment. So now I have a scientific excuse for not remembering you!

Faceblindness: Video From Good Morning America

2007-07-11T16:48:00.000-05:00

Here is the link to the video that was on American television this morning. It was seen on ABC's Good Morning America.

ABC News: Faceblindness: Forgetting Familiar Faces: "How would you feel if your wife or mother didn't recognize you across a crowded room?

For Elaine Scheib's family, it was a reality. Scheib, who has perfectly normal vision, could not recognize the face of her husband, Bill, until they had dated for a year, and it took four years before she memorized her children's faces.

Scheib is part of the 2 percent of the population that suffers from a condition called prosopagnosia, also known as faceblindness, according to Harvard University professor Ken Nakayama, who has studied faceblindness extensively.

People with the disorder, which can lead to severe social problems, lack sufficient wiring in the part of the brain that recognizes faces. For doctors, it provides insight into how the brain functions."

First the Wall Street Journal this week, and now this. I am so happy! I find it very difficult to tell people I have this, because it requires so much explaining, and often people don't think its real. The more people know about it, the lower the barrier to being able to discuss it with them.

ABC News: Meet a Family Whose Members Don't Recognize One Another

2007-07-11T16:40:00.000-05:00

ABC News: Meet a Family Whose Members Don't Recognize One Another: "Some people never forget a face.

But for 40 years, Sellers, a college English professor, has never been able to remember one. Even a face she's known since birth.

'I wouldn't be able to recognize my mother out of context if she was walking down the street. And then, along with that, I mistake people for her,' Sellers said."

I have had this same problem, not with my mother (I usually hear her coming:), but with my sister. It is the most disorienting, disconcerting feeling in the world. I can usually recognize my husband G, but I have walked by him enough times to not take it for granted. Thankfully, he often wears a baseball cap, so I just have to memorize which one he is wearing on any given day.

PA Article in Wall Street Journal

2007-07-05T12:27:00.000-05:00

Mysteries of the 'Faceblind' Could Illuminate the Brain - WSJ.com: PAGE ONE

YES! That's Page One! I went to the WSJ online and there was the print article in the "Page One" section.

IDENTITY PROBLEM
Strange Deficit Impairs
Ability to Recognize

By HEATHER WON TESORIERO
July 5, 2007; Page A1

MEDICAL MYSTERY

• What's New: Research into 'faceblindness' is examining links to brain functions, as well as improved ways to test for the condition.

• Coping: Patients say they compensate by recognizing people by their speech, hair or walking gait.

• Treatment Possibilities: Exercises used with autistic children are now being tested with prosopagnosia.

This is so exciting for me because the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is a U.S. based paper that we and many of our friends subscribe to. I find that it is so much easier to tell someone I have PA if they have already heard about it. There is a bit less skepticism and less explaining to do.

I realized this last week when a friend from the dog park casually revealed that he had ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). He said it in passing, expecting not to have to explain it to me, since there has been so much publicity about it in the last 10 years that most people have a good idea of what it is.

I found myself envious of him for having the wider known neurological condition.

Drawing A Blank Face - Video

2007-07-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

Wall Street Journal Video

Here is a video by WSJ reporter Heather Won Tesoriero:

"Drawing a Blank Face
A London artist on Prosopagnosia, also know as "Face Blindness," and the difficulty in not recognizing friends and family. "

Also featured in the video is U.C. London- based Brad Duchaine, one of the leading researchers in prosopagnosia. He is the one who tested me also.

One more bit of information out there for people to help people understand prosopagnosia.

Prosopagnosia in Age Determination?

2007-07-04T14:14:00.000-05:00

In an article on Slate.com about a new law in Tennessee that requires anyone who wants to buy alcohol to be carded, regardless of age, because of the lack of ability of clerks to accurately determine age. There is mention of prosopagnosia in the final paragraph.

Can a bartender tell if you're underage? - By Torie Bosch - Slate Magazine: "The new law might be helpful for any Tennessean store clerks suffering from a disorder called prosopagnosia, or 'face blindness.' Prosopagnosia, which is sometimes associated with a stroke, autism, brain damage, or other neurological disorder, can limit an individual's ability to estimate age at all."

The frustrating thing is that the term prosopagnosia is introduced, but not explained. It is only linked to the lack of ability to estimate age, which is more a possible symptom of not being able to recognize/remember faces in general, and certainly not attributable to prosopagnosics in general. It also does not mention it can be developmental, as well as acquired through brain trauma.

Mechanisms of Deja Vu Explained

2007-06-08T09:52:00.000-05:00

Brain mechanism explains sense of deja vu | Lifestyle | Reuters: "By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Most people have had deja vu -- that eerie sense of having experienced something before -- but U.S. researchers have identified the part of the brain responsible for this sensation, and they think it may lead to new treatments for memory-related problems.

They said neurons in a memory center of the brain called the hippocampus make a mental map of new places and experiences, then store them away for future use.

But when two experiences begin to seem very much alike, these mental maps overlap and start to blur."

Of more interest to me was this quote "Tonegawa said the type of memory that allows people to quickly distinguish different faces and places fades with age."

Oh great! That means NT's (neurotypical face recognizers) will eventually be poor at recognizing faces too. Who will we rely on then? I am married to a good face recognizer, and though I am sure he gets tired of the constant questioning, it is so helpful to me to have him there to identify people for me. If he loses his memory for faces, I will be in a bad spot!

Typecasting « Andrea’s Buzzing About:

2007-05-21T15:37:00.000-05:00

Typecasting « Andrea’s Buzzing About:

Here is a very insightful post on Andrea's blog about recognizing people she sees everyday, inspired by a "twinning" incident. Twinning is what I call it when you see the same person several times and recognize them as that person, only to later find it was was two different, but somehow similar, people. This is not an unusual occurrence for Prosopagnosics.

A Web Site For PA Kids and Their Parents

2007-05-08T19:18:00.000-05:00

Find A Face Organization Web Site

Here is a brand new Prosopagnosic web site for Kids. Says the co-founder Anne Mills:

"It's there to provide a service for parents of children and children with Prosopagnosia and other adults interested in helping children with PA, and will be directed by it's members' concerns. Many of the current members do not have PA, as that isn't a requirement for membership.

We are looking for someone with a degree in child psychology, or related field to volunteer to contribute to a monthly question and answer column. Please email me at annemills80@findaface.org if you are interested."

This will be a good resource for teachers who need to be aware of the possibility of undiagnosed prosopagnosia in their students. Another good outlet to further public education.

Brain Man, One Man's Gift May Be The Key To Better Understanding The Brain - CBS News

2007-05-07T21:44:00.000-05:00

On the American television show "60 minutes", there was an interview with a Savant named Daniel Tamment. He is an Englishman, who is a 27-year-old math and memory wizard. The interview with Morley Safer can be seen in full here.

Daniel's is a fascinating case, but of particular interest to me is the statement he makes to Morley at the end of the interview:

"'One hour after we leave today, and I will not remember what you look like. And I will find it difficult to recognize you, if I see you again. I will remember your handkerchief. And I will remember you have four buttons on your sleeve. And I'll remember the type of tie you're wearing. It's the details that I remember,' Tammet tells Safer."

The problem he is describing sounds exactly like prosopagnosia. It would not be unusual for him to have PA, since he has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome—a mild form of autism. Prosopagnosia often occurs along with both of these conditions.

Mind Hacks: When faces fade

2007-04-22T23:15:00.000-05:00

This post originated from www.MindHacks.com. Specific post link in title.

A March 2005 article in New Scientist reports on a study on a type of inherited prosopagnosia, suggesting a genetic basis for face recognition.

The research was an international effort, led by husband and wife team, geneticists Thomas and Martina Grüter. Notably, Thomas has a particular interest in this area, as he has prosopagnosia himself.

Mind Hacks spoke to two members of the research team about this intriguing study: Thomas on his own experience of prosopagnosia and the genetics of face recognition, and neuropsychologist Hadyn Ellis on the implications for the developing field of 'cognitive genetics'. Follow the title links for the entire interviews.

* * *

Thomas and Martina are part of a team of geneticists from the Institute of Human Genetics in Münster, Germany. They became interested in how Thomas' condition seemed to run in families and decided to study it in more detail. They recruited neuropsychologists from Cardiff University, initiating an international effort to examine the genetic basis of face perception.

The main finding of the study was that prosopagnosia seemed to be inherited in an autosomal dominant fashion, meaning only a single gene from one parent is needed to cause the condition.

Could it really be the case that the development of face recognition relies on a single gene ? We tackled Thomas on this controversial interpretation, but first we wanted to know, what it is like having prosopagnosia? * * *
How did you first realise you were unable to recognise faces as well as other people?

When I didn't recognize my teachers in the street. Some didn't care, but others were not amused. Most of the time, I wasn't even aware that I had overlooked them, if so, they didn't say a word.

What is it like having prosopagnosia ? For example, do faces seem strange or distorted to you?

Faces look perfectly normal, they just fade in my memory very quickly. I can recognize emotions as well as other people, maybe better.

To most people, not being able to recognise faces would seem a great disability. Why do you think most people with hereditary prosopagnosia are not significantly impaired by their condition ?

They have had all of their life to cope with the problem. They have learned to recognize people by other features like gait [walking style] or voice. And, of course, like colorblind people, they cannot imagine how it feels to remember faces normally.

Face blindness is a common hereditary disorder

2007-04-19T20:02:00.000-05:00

This article on recent research into the hereditary type of prosopagnosia (HPA), which came out last summer. There are some statements I noted in bold type.

Face blindness is a common hereditary disorder: "Face blindness is a common hereditary disorder

"In the first study to examine whether the inability to recognize faces can be inherited, researchers found that it is in fact a common disorder that runs in families and is one of the most frequent disorders apparently controlled by a defect in a single gene. The study was published online June 30, 2006 in American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A, and is available via Wiley InterScience.

Prosopagnosia (PA) or face blindness is characterized by the inability to differentiate faces, except for the most familiar ones such as members of one's family. It can be caused by brain injury, but cases where the disorder appears to run in families have also been reported. In the first systematic study of hereditary prosopagnosia (HPA), researchers led by Ingo Kennerknecht, M.D. of the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Muenster in Germany, recruited 689 subjects from local secondary schools and a medical school and administered a questionnaire to identify those with suspected HPA. They found 17 cases of the disorder, and of the 14 subjects who consented to further interfamilial testing, all of them had at least one first degree relative who also had it."

"Nearly all affected persons report a problem in deciding immediately whether a face is known," the authors state. Subjects report uncertainty in social situations and the inability to visualize the faces of close relatives or recall mental images of trees, leaves, or birds. They generally have difficulty following TV programs or movies because they cannot tell similar actors apart. All of the PA subjects revealed that they used up to three different strategies for overcoming the disorder. In the compensation strategy, subjects attempt to recognize people by other characteristics such as voice, gait, clothing or hair color. In the explanation strategy, subjects have a ready set of excuses as to why they can't recognize someone, such as being deep in thought or needing new glasses. In the avoidance strategy, subjects try to avoid situations where they might be unable to recognize faces, such as large functions or crowded places.

Inability to recall images of trees, leaves, or birds? Hmmm, I've never heard that before. I would say I'm not affected in this way, but then its not something I have ever focused on. I've heard many prosopagnosics (PA's) have trouble recognizing cars, but I've tested on this and seem to do ok.

The summary hits the nail on the head regarding the 3 coping strategies. One of the reasons I finally decided to "come out" about PA (albeit slowly) was that I noticed I was lying ALL the time, trying to cover up for my lapses, and make sure people did not feel that I took them lightly. My most frequent excuse was probably "I didn't recognize you because I was in my own little world.", implying I was daydreaming, and, of course, I never do that.