You all look the same: 1 out of 50 people do not recognize others (and may not know about it)
Prosopagnosia, or facial blindness, is a facial perception disorder in which a person cannot recognize faces, but other objects, including animal faces, recognize without any difficulty. People with this disease have to adapt and get to know others by voice, gait, hairstyle. Moreover, they themselves most often have never heard of their diagnosis.
Brad Pitt is one of the people who suffer from prostagophobia. A source
The human brain is able to recognize the faces of relatives, friends, colleagues, even in photographs with very low resolution. The better we know the person, the worse the photo can be in which we recognize him. But this property is not available to people with prozopagnosia - a disorder of perception of the face. They see the nose, mouth, eyebrow, chin, but the brain cannot compose a complete picture of these elements and relate it to the information existing in the memory about a particular person. This disease, first described in the XIX century, can interfere with the life of about 2% of the world's population. Another problem: not all doctors are familiar with this disorder, and it is often not diagnosed. That is, people do not know that they have such a disease.
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American neurologist Oliver Sachs published the book The Man Who Took a Wife for a Hat , in which he described cases of this disorder from his own medical practice. The name is not a joke and not an irony: “Having decided that the inspection was completed, the professor began to look around for hat. He stretched out his hand, grabbed his wife by the head and ... tried to lift her to put on himself. This man in front of my eyes took my wife for a hat! At the same time, the wife herself remained completely calm, as if she had long been accustomed to such things. ”
The patient did not have any mental illness, but suffered from agnosia, in which he was not able to distinguish the leg from the boot or the head of the wife from the hat. The same patient recognized the geometric forms, and also guessed famous people by individual elements in caricatures - for example, Winston Churchill by his cigar, but could not distinguish the expressions of the actress’s faces on the TV screen. The patient could guess the rose by smell, but at first he saw it as a “curved red shape with a green linear appendage”.
In this case, visual agnosia extended not only to faces, but also to objects. Prozopagnosia often does not perceive the face, and objects or animals are recognized without any problems. Already in 1871, this disorder was simply and accurately described by Lewis Carroll in Alice’s dialogue with Humpty Dumpty in the work of Alice Through the Looking Glass. Since then, the unofficial name of the disease - “Humpty Dumpty Syndrome”:
““ Even if we meet, I don’t recognize you anyway, ”Humpty grumbled discontentedly and gave her one finger. - You are so much like all people!
“Usually people are distinguished by their faces,” said Alice thoughtfully.
“So I say,” said Humpty Dumpty. - All on one face: two eyes (and he twice poked his thumb in the air) ... in the middle - the nose, and under it - the mouth. Everyone is always the same! Now, if you had both eyes on the same side, and a mouth on your forehead, then I probably would have remembered you. ”
The term "prozopagnosia" was first used in 1947 by German neuropathologist Joachim Bodamer. He described three cases of the disease, one of which was associated with the wound of a 24-year-old man - he stopped recognizing friends, relatives and himself in the mirror. He was guided by hearing and tactile sensations, as well as walking, maneuvers and other features. Those suffering from this disorder have to adapt and look for different ways of identifying people.
The very fact of the existence of prozopagnosia led to research on the human perception of the face. When we see another person, our brain performs several tasks, including the recognition of individual elements of the face, the ratio of information to the data in memory of our friends and the search for a name, the definition of a person’s gender, his profession, and so on. With prozopagnosii, this scheme is broken.
The causes of the disorder may be brain damage or disease, but there is an assumption that it is inherited. In 1976, a case was recorded when a 12-year-old girl was unable to recognize her classmates in school uniform. The girl's mother also had difficulty recognizing faces.
It’s usually harder for people to recognize someone if their picture is turned upside down and there’s nothing on it except a face.
In the image below, getting to know people has become much easier.
In 2000, the Internet began to draw attention to the problems of protopagnosis, and researchers were able to find hundreds of people with this ailment. In 2006, the first study found that developing pro-posopagnosis is present in 2.47% of the population, and in another study in 2009 it was found that this indicator could be 2.9%. People also complain about the inability to distinguish the film characters from each other.
There is also a problem with diagnostics. People who do not greet colleagues, friends outside the familiar environment, are considered arrogant, this behavior leads to conflicts, and it is most often not explained. The person himself may assume that he has memory problems, blame himself for inattention.
“Everyone thinks that I’m a haughty lie-wit, because I’m passing by and I don’t even greet good friends,” Stepan Kazaryan told in an interview for Poster. At 15, he did not recognize the mother in the minibus, and at school he recognized his classmates only by the hairstyles and the places where they were sitting, and he did not remember anyone from the parallel class. At the institute, this technique became difficult to turn around - everyone sat where they wanted. In the second year, he made a gift not to the girl he liked, but to the other “little brunette”. When, on the advice of a friend who read about this ailment, Stepan went to a neurologist, he became his first patient with such a diagnosis.
Dr. Sarah Bate has been engaged in research in this area since 2010, as well as highlighting problems in society. Sarah Bait leads a team of researchers from Bournemouth University, which has developed the world's first standard for the early diagnosis of protopagnosis . A checklist with a list of symptoms is also intended for parents: researchers are confident that people who have a disorder at an early age will have a chance to improve their recognition skills during a period of high learning ability.
According to the symptom list, you may have pro-propagnosis if you:
Checklist is available by reference . The scientific article was published on January 26, 2018 in the journal Nature (doi: 10.1038 / s41598-018-20089-7).
Brad Pitt is one of the people who suffer from prostagophobia. A source
The human brain is able to recognize the faces of relatives, friends, colleagues, even in photographs with very low resolution. The better we know the person, the worse the photo can be in which we recognize him. But this property is not available to people with prozopagnosia - a disorder of perception of the face. They see the nose, mouth, eyebrow, chin, but the brain cannot compose a complete picture of these elements and relate it to the information existing in the memory about a particular person. This disease, first described in the XIX century, can interfere with the life of about 2% of the world's population. Another problem: not all doctors are familiar with this disorder, and it is often not diagnosed. That is, people do not know that they have such a disease.
')
American neurologist Oliver Sachs published the book The Man Who Took a Wife for a Hat , in which he described cases of this disorder from his own medical practice. The name is not a joke and not an irony: “Having decided that the inspection was completed, the professor began to look around for hat. He stretched out his hand, grabbed his wife by the head and ... tried to lift her to put on himself. This man in front of my eyes took my wife for a hat! At the same time, the wife herself remained completely calm, as if she had long been accustomed to such things. ”
The patient did not have any mental illness, but suffered from agnosia, in which he was not able to distinguish the leg from the boot or the head of the wife from the hat. The same patient recognized the geometric forms, and also guessed famous people by individual elements in caricatures - for example, Winston Churchill by his cigar, but could not distinguish the expressions of the actress’s faces on the TV screen. The patient could guess the rose by smell, but at first he saw it as a “curved red shape with a green linear appendage”.
In this case, visual agnosia extended not only to faces, but also to objects. Prozopagnosia often does not perceive the face, and objects or animals are recognized without any problems. Already in 1871, this disorder was simply and accurately described by Lewis Carroll in Alice’s dialogue with Humpty Dumpty in the work of Alice Through the Looking Glass. Since then, the unofficial name of the disease - “Humpty Dumpty Syndrome”:
““ Even if we meet, I don’t recognize you anyway, ”Humpty grumbled discontentedly and gave her one finger. - You are so much like all people!
“Usually people are distinguished by their faces,” said Alice thoughtfully.
“So I say,” said Humpty Dumpty. - All on one face: two eyes (and he twice poked his thumb in the air) ... in the middle - the nose, and under it - the mouth. Everyone is always the same! Now, if you had both eyes on the same side, and a mouth on your forehead, then I probably would have remembered you. ”
The term "prozopagnosia" was first used in 1947 by German neuropathologist Joachim Bodamer. He described three cases of the disease, one of which was associated with the wound of a 24-year-old man - he stopped recognizing friends, relatives and himself in the mirror. He was guided by hearing and tactile sensations, as well as walking, maneuvers and other features. Those suffering from this disorder have to adapt and look for different ways of identifying people.
The very fact of the existence of prozopagnosia led to research on the human perception of the face. When we see another person, our brain performs several tasks, including the recognition of individual elements of the face, the ratio of information to the data in memory of our friends and the search for a name, the definition of a person’s gender, his profession, and so on. With prozopagnosii, this scheme is broken.
The causes of the disorder may be brain damage or disease, but there is an assumption that it is inherited. In 1976, a case was recorded when a 12-year-old girl was unable to recognize her classmates in school uniform. The girl's mother also had difficulty recognizing faces.
It’s usually harder for people to recognize someone if their picture is turned upside down and there’s nothing on it except a face.
In the image below, getting to know people has become much easier.
In 2000, the Internet began to draw attention to the problems of protopagnosis, and researchers were able to find hundreds of people with this ailment. In 2006, the first study found that developing pro-posopagnosis is present in 2.47% of the population, and in another study in 2009 it was found that this indicator could be 2.9%. People also complain about the inability to distinguish the film characters from each other.
There is also a problem with diagnostics. People who do not greet colleagues, friends outside the familiar environment, are considered arrogant, this behavior leads to conflicts, and it is most often not explained. The person himself may assume that he has memory problems, blame himself for inattention.
“Everyone thinks that I’m a haughty lie-wit, because I’m passing by and I don’t even greet good friends,” Stepan Kazaryan told in an interview for Poster. At 15, he did not recognize the mother in the minibus, and at school he recognized his classmates only by the hairstyles and the places where they were sitting, and he did not remember anyone from the parallel class. At the institute, this technique became difficult to turn around - everyone sat where they wanted. In the second year, he made a gift not to the girl he liked, but to the other “little brunette”. When, on the advice of a friend who read about this ailment, Stepan went to a neurologist, he became his first patient with such a diagnosis.
Dr. Sarah Bate has been engaged in research in this area since 2010, as well as highlighting problems in society. Sarah Bait leads a team of researchers from Bournemouth University, which has developed the world's first standard for the early diagnosis of protopagnosis . A checklist with a list of symptoms is also intended for parents: researchers are confident that people who have a disorder at an early age will have a chance to improve their recognition skills during a period of high learning ability.
According to the symptom list, you may have pro-propagnosis if you:
- Confuse characters in movies, TV shows and / or games.
- Unable to identify people in photographs (including celebrities, a person you personally know or yourself).
- Lost in a public place - on the playground, train station.
- Difficulties arise in groups of people with the same external data - for example, when others wear the same form, have the same age or gender.
- When confronted with a person, ask general questions to try to determine who you are talking to.
- Constantly avoid naming other people.
- Do not imagine yourself to other people, do not introduce two people to each other.
- You do not recognize people when their hairstyle or hair color, voice, gait, clothes have changed.
- Describe people with non-face information: “a person with a motorcycle helmet”).
- You do not recognize familiar people, colleagues in an unusual situation.
- Do not see friends on the street.
- Easily recognize people in the expected setting - a colleague in the workplace.
Checklist is available by reference . The scientific article was published on January 26, 2018 in the journal Nature (doi: 10.1038 / s41598-018-20089-7).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/374209/
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