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Do you forget people's face? Do you have trouble recognising people? You may be sufferring from face blindness, also known as Prosopagnosia. It's like dyslexia, but with faces instead of letters. This condition was only discovered ten years ago, and it's estimated that as many as one in fifty of us may have it to some degree.

In this pod, we tell the story of Alanna Maltby, a 27 year old phd student, who only recently was diagnosed with face blindness by Brad Duchaine, the director of research at the Prosopagnosia Research Center at UCL

Alanna tells us how the condition affects her life and how she manages to cope. Brad Duchaine takes us through what they know (very little) and what they don't know (a great deal) about the condition.
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jriggall
  • video added June 30, 2009

11 comments // Face Blindness // Video

  •  

    Very interesting. I am an artist and I actually remember everyones face. Like photographic memory so this seems very strange to me as i do portraits. I actually have dreams where I am cycling through 100s of facing and i am convinced these are real people I have seen during the day. As I watched this I wondered how did these girls handle this condition as children? Being a baby, then toddler and not recognizing your parents in a public place, etc? I would imagine that your other senses are increased, like voice recognition to compensate.
    Is this condition random or is it inherited?

    LadyArbel
  •  

    As an artist myself, but rather lousy at caricature, I wonder if my more laborious mechanistic (to begin with) approach the portraiture might help such folk "chisel into the synapses" as it were the features of a subject; measure and record proportions in tedious exacting detail, and repeat. I bet the shape of a nostril could be retained with study,...these folks can apparently recognize shapes, distances, proportions, etc.,....the just don't turn it into quick social memory forms. Have them try to copy a portrait, with the original upside down. Try focusing on "negative space". Treat it as an artistic study problem .This is interesting as hell!

    remanns
  •  

    wow this is interesting...i learn something new every time i watch current.

    ashleyka
  •  

    The brain is always an interesting topic. It is fascinating how it filters and recalls information, especially when quarks like this emerge in some people.

    hcice
  •  

    i bet you one hundred dollar i could get those girls to remember me!

    matlaroche
  •  

    Wow. I have never heard of this. Very informative.

    NotCaleb
  •  

    I have what would roughly be the exact reverse of this!!! I remember anyone I meet by their face,but it might take some time for me to think up their name! (That is if I even know it) I think if you can name something that is even a minor inconvenience, there's a long Latin name for it & people are likely taking drugs for it! Sad really!

    NuclearLullaby
  •  

    Never heard of this before, but I think I may have had a mild form of it...

    When I was a kid, I always was worried that people who know me weren't going to recognize me because I thought my face was too "plain" or "generic." I thought to myself "I look exactly like everyone else. How can people tell me apart?" It was a fixation for a while.

    And as for my own observations - I've never noticed this problem in my personal life, but I have watched movies where I have no idea what's going on because the characters look too similar. For half of the movie The Departed, I was so confused because I couldn't tell Matt Damon & Leonardo DiCaprio apart.

    Found_Avenue
  •  

    dear Found_Avenue , sounds like you may have a variation of:

    Capgras Syndrome

    People suffering from the extremely rare Capgras Syndrome believe that a loved one or a significant other person in their life is being impersonated by an impostor. This can even lead to the sufferer attacking the perceived impostor. Sometimes it extends itself to the sufferer themselves who believe that when they look in the mirror it is not their own reflection staring back at them but the image of an impersonator.

    matlaroche
  •  

    hi,

    Thanks for watching and all the comments....if you would like to see more of my films go to www.sketchmediacompany.com
    thanks,
    J

    jriggall
  •  

    "I have this condition."

    EmperorThan

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