Sunday, March 20, 2011

Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia is "face-blindness"---a disorder in which a person has full mental capacity but cannot recognize faces no matter how many times one has seen them. Scientists believe it is due to a malfunctioning of the fusiform gyrus, a part of the temporal lobe in the front of the brain that handles how we see and understand color, words, numbers, abstractions, and---yup---faces.

Prosopagnosia has a huge wikipedia page where you can read all about this strange disorder.
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3 comments:

  1. seana grahamMarch 20, 2011 at 2:35 PM

    I was fascinated to learn about this from an Oliver Sacks article in the New Yorker recently. Sacks apparently suffers from it himself. The online gives you only the abstract, but here's the link so you'll at least know which issue it is.

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  2. PQMarch 20, 2011 at 3:52 PM

    Thanks, Seana. Very interesting stuff. I came across it in a book and immediately had to share it.

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  3. seana grahamMarch 20, 2011 at 4:44 PM

    I think it stuck with me because I actually am not the best at remembering faces myself, which is a drawback when you work in retail. It's nothing like what these poor people deal with, it's more that I have to see people a few times before they really stick.

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