Prosopagnosia - 7/6/2010
Imagine a situation where you wake up every day to a house full of unknown faces, where every reflection in a mirror is a stranger staring back. These people are not unfamiliar, but simply unrecognisable. It is a circumstance that is becoming more and more prominent and its effects present a variety of challenges to both the sufferer and the environments in which they live.
Prosopagnosia, or as it is commonly referred, face blindness is a neurological disorder that impedes the ability for a person to recognise faces. The capacity to actually see faces is unrelated to the condition and so a person with perfect vision can suffer from face blindness.
Historically, face blindness was believed to be solely acquired. The most common causes were thought to be from physical damage to the brain due to stroke or brain injuries. However, new research has discovered that face blindness may be a congenital condition and is more common than first anticipated.
A study of seven families of prosopagnosia sufferers by the Institute for Human Genetics in Münster, Germany revealed that 38 relatives demonstrated symptoms of face blindness. This revelation triggered further research into the genetic aspects of the condition.
Brenna Quinlan is a 23 year old visual arts graduate who suffers from facial blindness. Knowledge of the disorder is so unapparent that it was only through chance that Brenna was diagnosed.
Media and science personality, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki is a noted sufferer of face blindness and has frequently revealed intimate details of his disorder through the media. Brenna happened to be listening to one of his radio shows on ABC’s JJJ station when he elaborated on his condition. A sense of familiarity then washed over Brenna and “all these problems that I had suddenly had an explanation”.
Once Brenna’s condition had a name, a search of the internet led her to the online tests provided by faceblind.org. The Famous Faces Test uses images of celebrities where their ears and hair are cropped to reveal only their facial features. On this test the average score is 85, but for Brenna her score totalled 57% - a result that put her in the range of a prosopagnosia sufferer.
For Brenna, instances of face blindness had occurred from an early age and often resulted in some form of social faux pas. The first noted instance was when she was 7 years old. Walking home from school with her mother, a young girl said hello from a passing car. Not recognising her, Brenna simply ignored the greeting and continued walking. Her mother immediately pointed out the rudeness. This act of perceived impoliteness was part of a larger problem and an early indicator of the unfavourable social situations that regularly affect a face blindness sufferer.
A person with face blindness will typically adapt to the condition to avoid social awkwardness and employ a number of alternative ways to recognise someone. The most common method of remembering is to concentrate on other parts of a person’s appearance. Brenna says “if I really try, I can study someone’s face… I’ll say their eyes remind me of this person I’ve seen before. Their jaw line reminds of this person. I’ll remember their hair colour or anything odd like a mole or piercing. Normally at parties I just remember people by their shirt.” However, these are just workarounds and the next day if the person has changed clothes Brenna will not recognise them.
Fortunately for Brenna a lot of her friends are particularly “weird looking”, with prominent features like brightly coloured hair, tattoos and piercings. These then become indicators for her to recognise them. Despite this, most social situations present themself as “a new party and new group of people to forget.”
Further to this, the complexity of the condition is displayed as Brenna is able to better recognise a face on a photograph than she can in real life. She feels her artistic abilities allow her to map a face out on a two dimensional plane, but the translation back to real life is not always apparent. There are three steps to memorising faces. The first is general visual perception, which Brenna had no difficulties with. The second is visual perception for faces. As faces all have 2 eyes, 1 mouth and a nose the intricate differences between people are mapped. Again, Brenna is able to complete this. The final stage is face memory and this is where Brenna struggles. However, as her visual perception is at a normal level, recognising a face in a picture is easier than seeing someone in person.
Explaining her condition has often proved difficult for Brenna. When she tells someone she is bad with faces she is often met with a response like ‘I’m bad with words.’ She feels these statements trivialise the disorder and are evidence of the widespread ignorance of such a common condition.
These social consequences have caused a number of face blindness sufferers to become introverted about their disorder. Once diagnosed, Brenna’s immediate family joined her in taking the online test and all scored lower than the average. The congenital effects in her life then became more apparent, but more startling for Brenna was her father’s refusal to take the online test.
Brenna says her father shows the greatest signs of face blindness in the family. He regularly confuses celebrities and acquaintances with people who have few physical features in common, often including different skin colours. Despite the increasing numbers of diagnoses, Brenna feels it is because of the inherent embarrassment about the condition that people like her father are intimidated by the idea of them being different.
This embarrassment and social awkwardness extended to the way research for the condition is gathered. Having taken part in a research session at Macquarie University’s Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Brenna left feeling frustrated and exhausted. At the time the researchers were focusing on the link between autism and prosopagnosia, as their previous research had found autism sufferers have trouble recognising faces. Brenna felt the idiosyncrasies of her condition were relevant to prosopagnosia research but were instead ignored. Rather than focusing on causes and links to other syndromes, she felt it would be more beneficial for sufferers to collaborate on methods for dealing with the condition.
Given the increased numbers of reported cases of prosopagnosia, it is important that the disorder is given greater public recognition. Such a common disorder could hypothetically have a drastic effect on the credibility of a witness in court, police reports and other legal issues. However, for a sufferer like Brenna improving the awareness of face blindness would have a dramatic effect. Put simply, it would be “nice for people not to think I was rude.”
