I do not recognize your face

Back in the 19th century, cases of inability to recognize faces were recorded. Studies of this phenomenon involved Hyulings John Jackson and Jean-Martin Charcot.

However, a systematic description of this phenomenon for the first time gave the German neurologist Joachim Bodamer (Joachim Bodamer). In 1947, he first used the term prosopagnosia, which literally means "misrecognition person" and systematically described three cases of this disorder.

Here is one of them: a man 24 years after being wounded in the head no longer recognize their relatives, friends and even your own face. Despite this, he has not lost the ability to recognize their other sensory feelings such as hearing, tactile sensations, and even can visually distinguish them from other stimuli (gait, manner of moving, etc.).

All this data led to the conclusion that for a human face recognition answers separate region of the brain, which could cause damage to disorders of perception. 

Clinical manifestations

Prosopagnosia can be caused by traumatic brain injury, vascular disorders in the lower right-occipital region, often with a focus on the spread of adjacent sections of the temporal and parietal lobes, as well as tumor growth.

Such patients are easy to determine whether or not two faces of the same. In addition, they know the person, if looking at him and at the same time to hear his voice. From this it follows that prosopagnosia - a modal-specific disorder in which visual information does not interact with the information obtained by the other sense organs and therefore can not be interpreted as a particular image is stored in memory.

Prosopagnosia characterized by impaired recognition of familiar faces. Learning of the face and featuring the face of the other facilities, patients are not able to determine its individual identity. In some cases, are not able to distinguish between the faces of men and women, especially their facial expressions.

Do not also recognize faces close relatives (husband, wife, children, doctor), and in severe cases do not recognize in the mirror of his own face. Cases of when disturbed recognition of animals and birds. In mild cases, broken face recognition only in photographs and film. In recognition of the sick people use workarounds, such as voice recognition, gait, perfume, etc.

The man with the various forms of prosopagnosia are usually no different from a healthy person. One of the first complaints of the patient will be in the fact that it is difficult and sometimes impossible to discern in the face of new photos of relatives and friends. It becomes difficult to distinguish between the characters in the movies - they are for it to one person.

According to the researchers, some patients with severe prosopagnosia do not distinguish between not only individuals, but also in general any items belonging to the same type of objects. For example, a person they perceive only as a person, a car - a car and can not determine whose is the face, or what brand of this machine.

Social aspects

Prosopagnosia not manifest specific symptoms. Most often the patients themselves report violations of their perception, often turning to psychologists and psychiatrists. The patient is not able to determine who is close to him - a friend or a stranger (unless he understood it on clothes or walk), if you need to stop, smile and talk, or we must proceed by not reacting to the person.

An important point is the fact that the problems associated with the recognition of individual and, as a consequence, with the recognition should be reported to a close. After all, if friends and family are not aware of the presence of prosopagnosia, this may lead to a sharp break social contacts.

Rupture of social relations is fraught with almost complete exclusion suffered by undiagnosed prozopagnoziki. All this once again confirms the fact that the role of facial recognition plays an important role in establishing and maintaining social relations in contemporary, and even more primitive societies.

Facts about prosopagnosia

Authentication problems occur in old age often have left-handers. It is noticed that who prefer writing with his left hand more often are born in late marriages than young parents.

Another phenomenon of prosopagnosia is that most people suffering from problems with the recognition, the greatest difficulties arise with the recognition and memorization of the people with whom they have regular contact in daily life. At the same time distant relatives and friends with whom communicate rarely, patients learn and remember better.

Most likely, this is due to several factors:

• in everyday life, people are constantly changing clothes - the patient is difficult to adapt and memorize these details;
• with distant relatives and distant friends often contact the patient by phone - it contributes to a better memorization of the tone of voice, manner of speaking.

To help people suffering from prosopagnosia, successful therapies have been developed to help them learn to recognize people by features such as gait, hairstyle, voice, stock shapes, style of dress, and so on. N. As is usually the person is the individual character and the most important differentiating factor in memory, for people with this condition can be difficult to properly correlate the information about the people and lead a normal social life.