Wednesday, January 17, 2007

more news on the who-the-hell-are-you front

Just came across an interesting article on face blindness (a.k.a. Prosopagnosia), a subject that interests me because of my own difficulties recognizing people. It's very good, you should read it if you like Oliver Sacks-style articles about the nutty things our brains are up to, or if you're bad with faces. Oddly enough, they now say perhaps as much as 2% of the population has some degree of prosopagnosia. Which is strange because I almost never meet people who say they're bad with faces. But it sounds like a lot of people just fake it and don't even tell people. I have met two people who say they can't recognize people, though, so there are a few.

1 comment:

  1. I've got faceblindness - had it since birth. I didn't really recognize the problem until I read a description of it by Oliver Sacks. Then I was just amazed how perfectly it all fit together.

    I think many of us simply don't realize we've got it. We assume we're lazy, or stupid, or that we simply don't care. We compensate - I can recognize people by their body language, their clothing, where they usually are, jewelry, many other clues that, while not as good as face recognition, help to soften the impact of the inability.

    It's just not something we're used to talking about, yet. Still - many more people have it, than was previously thought. Not long ago, it was thought this condition was extremely rare, one in a million or so. Now they're thinking around 2%.

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