What Is Prosopagnosia?

Prosopagnosia is more commonly known as face blindness. It is a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces. Depending upon the degree of impairment, some people with prosopagnosia may only have difficulty recognizing a familiar face. Others will be unable to discriminate between unknown faces, while still others may not even be able to distinguish a face as being different than an object. Face blindness is not related to memory dysfunction, memory loss or learning disabilities. It is thought to result from abnormalities, damage or impairment in the right fusiform gyrus, a fold in the brain that coordinate the neural systems that control facial perception and memory.

Prosopagnosia can result from stroke, traumatic brain injury or certain neurodegenerative diseases. Some degree of prosopagnosia is often present in children with autism and Asperger's syndrome, and may be the cause of their impaired social development.

Prosopagnosia caused by brain injury or stroke can be helped. People can be retrained and recognition can be improved. Face blindness caused by neurological disorders cannot be cured at this time. However, people that know they have it can be taught to use other cues to help recognize people. For example, voice, haircut, body language and gestures can help an individual with face blindness identify people. Having this condition can lead to social isolation, as people may interpret one's lack of recognition as a lack of interest in the person. It can hurt a person's opportunity for jobs, or advancement on the job, and their personal relationships. For now, there is no cure, and those that have this condition can use other cues to compensate for lack of facial recognition.

There are a number of famous people who identify themselves as having prosopagnosia. Brad Pitt, Dr. Oliver Sacks (famous neurologist who wrote the book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat"), Jane Goodall and Hubert Dreyfus (American philosopher) are just a few of the millions of people worldwide with this condition. This is a condition that, with the advances in neuroscience, will one day soon be better understood.