Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia is a relatively rare cognitive disorder which causes difficulties in face recognition and perception (Bate & Tree, 2016). Face perception involves many functions within the brain, from processing memories of faces to judging the qualities of a face (Lidaka, 2014). Many researchers have conducted studies to try and determine just how face perception occurs, and whether this process is different to the process involved in the id entification of general objects. Studies of individuals with prosopagnosia for face versus object stimuli have strengthened the theory that these processes are different, as well as studies using the face inversion effect. Specific areas within the brain have also been identified as being more active when shown face stimuli. There are arguments against the face-specific theories, suggesting that faces are not specially processed, rather they are more complex (Damasio, Damasio, & Van Hoesen, 1982) or that areas in the brain which are often regarded as face specific can be trained to elicit activity in other objects (Gauthier, Tarr, Anderson, Skudlarski & Gore, 1999). As prosopagnosia is face specific, many studies on face versus object processing have been carried out individuals with the disorder.…

What have studies of visual object agnosia and prosopagnosia contributed to our understanding of visual recognition? A lot of what we understand about visual recognition comes from investigating cases where the processes involved go wrong. The absence of a cognitive ability can provide is with the ability to look at where things differ in these individuals from those with normal levels of processing. In the case of visual recognition, we can look at different forms of visual agnosias in order…

Prosopagnosia Individuals that have Prosopagnosia perceive the world so much differently than others who don’t share the disease. The significant difference for these individuals is that they cannot distinguish faces apart and in most cases, where normally meeting a love one the connection is automatically produced in our brains in recognizing one’s face. As for those diagnose with Prosopagnosia these automatic functions are lost. This disorder proves so difficult for the basic fact that every…

Prosopagnosia is a deficit in recognising familiar faces. Patients report inability to judge age, gender or recognise certain emotional expressions (Corrow, Dalrymple & Barton, 2016). Cognitive tests of prosopagnosia include accuracy and reaction time variable, were the patients are required to name famous faces or to make response time judgements for face-name pairings. Philip is an example of a patient with acquired prosopagnosia. He obtained his condition after a car accident which resulted…

Prosopagnosia, commonly known as “facial blindness”, is the inability to recognize identity from faces. This impairment can either be acquired following a brain injury, called acquired prosopagnosia, or developmental in nature, in which case the individuals have never developed an ability to recognize faces, also known as congenital prosopagnosia. Being able to recognize faces rapidly and accurately is crucial for distinguishing family members, friends, and colleagues from strangers and to even…

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is the inability to recognize faces (Biotti & Cook, 2016). DP can affect one in every 50 individuals, both men and women (Biotti & Cook, 2016). DP is caused in the temporal lobe in a specific area known as the fusiform face area. The fusiform face area is the ability for an individual’s brain to be able to help recognize different faces (Biotti & Cook, 2016). One thing that is interesting about this topic is, a person with DP is not able to recognize faces but…

Introduction Developmental prosopagnosia is a condition, which a child has difficulty in recognizing faces due to a failure to develop necessary neural mechanisms for processing faces. Some children even fail to recognize faces of family and friends, and unable to recognize their own face in the mirror. This causes a lot of stress on a child in school and in social situations. It can also be dangerous if a child is separated from their caregiver if they are unable to relocate them, or may…

Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness affects 2% of the world’s population, which means 150 million people suffer with this on a daily basis. This disorder inhibits people from recognizing the faces of those around them including family members. Prosopagnosia wasn’t really discovered or heavily studied until 1947, by Joachim Bodamer. There are two main types of prosopagnosia, acquired and developmental. Though often not heard of prosopagnosia has been the struggle of protagonists in…

When I was a lot younger I was diagnosed with an illness called prosopagnosia, meaning that I am incapable of recognising faces. No matter how many times I have seen someone it is impossible to instantly tell who they are and it gets no easier. It is not something that I can cure and I cannot explain the frustration that I face every minute of every day. Imagine walking into a room full of strangers but everyone else already knows each other, this is what my life is like, will always be and…

and it deals with the visual phenomenon known as prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia is defined as difficulty in recognizing the faces of familiar people (Goldstein, 2010). It is derived from two Greek words. Prosopon meaning face and agnosia meaning not knowing (Prosopagnosia Research Centers). Your imagination does not have to travel to far to think about the real life implications this could have on you or someone you love. That is precisely what made me want to find literature on this topic. My…