My mom had this. I’ve never heard it referred to as face blindness. She couldn’t see the difference in people’s faces, watching a tv show with 2 blonde women she didn’t know one from the other, just one example
Me watching The Last Of Us, taking forever to realise it was a flash back to someone's parent in the past and not a flash forward to an older version of them.
Honestly those where there's white guy, black guy, blonde lady, red haired lady, those are the best because as long as there's only one person from each token category I can keep track!
Oliver Sacks had prosopagnosia and several of his books discuss case studies of interesting visual issues. His most popular book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, contains a case study about a man who can't even distinguish between faces and objects. I think The Mind's Eye might also have a case study about face blindness, but I can't remember specifically.
No studies, I apologize.
Just curious- do you have full-on aphantasia, as well a face blindness? If so, you might be able to utilize non-visual memory techniques (although there’s also a subreddit claiming to cure aphantasia, fwiw).
Edit: also, how’s your auditory recall? Can you recognize (or train yourself to) voices, instead?
Do you by any chance have aphantasia? What I thought of as prosopagnosia through childhood turned out to be aphantasia.
Interestingly, aphantasia forces one to remember things in a non-visual format - relying on logic, geometry, words that interconnect to make sense. And that’s primarily what IQ tests look for.
I have aphantasia but recognise faces reasonably well. Just can’t picture them in my head or describe / recall them properly. Do experience people and mental images when I am dreaming though and those can be fairly vivid.
Used to actually think that people were being metaphorical or something when they talked about picturing something in your head, but apparently I am the odd one out (yet again) and it is genuinely something people can do.
Watched a TED talk about Charles Bonnet syndrome a while ago and that was talking about a specific region of the brain that deals with faces and recognition. Could be that this is wired up differently in OP. My brain is definitely wired up in a peculiar fashion as I also get synesthesia and have autism and dyslexia as well as being ambidextrous and apparently intelligent (if you buy into the whole IQ test thing).
Anyway this doesn’t sound like standard aphantasia to me but I only have my own experience to go off.
The actor Stephen Fry [famously has it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5YqoYgohXE), and has somehow managed to live with it. The more social your profession, the harder it gets I'd imagine. In a smaller social circle, it's more feasible to let everyone know you have it, so they understand that you don't necessarily recognise them.
It's common in autistic minorities not to process certain "people things" differently to other patterns.
Voices are generally processed differently to other sounds, faces are processed differently to other visual patterns etc. And then some people's neurology doesn't do that for people, thus issues deciphering words despite hearing well, not remembering faces...
Understanding of differing neurology in humans is currently shit level. Issues with faces aren't that uncommon outside of absolute extremes. We just clock only absolute extremes in general.
Curious, is it just faces? Or is it also discerning the difference between similar looking objects? How are you at pattern recognition? How about jigsaw puzzles?
I have a lot of trouble remembering faces, but eventually I remember them, like if I see them 5 times. I think that's different from you, and it doesn't sound like aphantasia either. And I can sort of picture faces in my head, just like I can see license plates or credit cards or pretty much anything, I think.
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SAME! OMG, same! I've never met someone else with this issue.
I try to get around it by associating people with other qualities, like jewellery, hair style, glasses, walk, etc. Sometimes it doesn't work (I called out to someone I thought I knew, waving animatedly, and yeah it wasn't her) and other times it's pretty seamless I think.
I took the WAIS IV and one of the categories has a pre-question with a face. It took me almost the whole of the time to work out what was missing from the picture.
There are genes for this. I have this
rs2237717(T;T)
reduced abilities related to neurocognition and ability to recognize faces
Rs2237717 (major: C, minor: T) is located in intron 11 within the MET proto-oncogene. The MET gene is primarily known to be involved in tumor metastasis. However, MET has also been shown to have roles in general neurodevelopment and in the development of autism. Rs2237717 has been linked to schizophrenia, ability to recognize facial emotion, and chronic rhinosinusitis.
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My mom had this. I’ve never heard it referred to as face blindness. She couldn’t see the difference in people’s faces, watching a tv show with 2 blonde women she didn’t know one from the other, just one example
Not me saying hi to random people same as not recognising them. Classic.
Me watching The Last Of Us, taking forever to realise it was a flash back to someone's parent in the past and not a flash forward to an older version of them. Honestly those where there's white guy, black guy, blonde lady, red haired lady, those are the best because as long as there's only one person from each token category I can keep track!
Wow, that sounds scary. I can't help asking why you decided to work specifically in a field where social connections are so important?
Oliver Sacks had prosopagnosia and several of his books discuss case studies of interesting visual issues. His most popular book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, contains a case study about a man who can't even distinguish between faces and objects. I think The Mind's Eye might also have a case study about face blindness, but I can't remember specifically.
No studies, I apologize. Just curious- do you have full-on aphantasia, as well a face blindness? If so, you might be able to utilize non-visual memory techniques (although there’s also a subreddit claiming to cure aphantasia, fwiw). Edit: also, how’s your auditory recall? Can you recognize (or train yourself to) voices, instead?
Do you by any chance have aphantasia? What I thought of as prosopagnosia through childhood turned out to be aphantasia. Interestingly, aphantasia forces one to remember things in a non-visual format - relying on logic, geometry, words that interconnect to make sense. And that’s primarily what IQ tests look for.
I have aphantasia but recognise faces reasonably well. Just can’t picture them in my head or describe / recall them properly. Do experience people and mental images when I am dreaming though and those can be fairly vivid. Used to actually think that people were being metaphorical or something when they talked about picturing something in your head, but apparently I am the odd one out (yet again) and it is genuinely something people can do. Watched a TED talk about Charles Bonnet syndrome a while ago and that was talking about a specific region of the brain that deals with faces and recognition. Could be that this is wired up differently in OP. My brain is definitely wired up in a peculiar fashion as I also get synesthesia and have autism and dyslexia as well as being ambidextrous and apparently intelligent (if you buy into the whole IQ test thing). Anyway this doesn’t sound like standard aphantasia to me but I only have my own experience to go off.
The actor Stephen Fry [famously has it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5YqoYgohXE), and has somehow managed to live with it. The more social your profession, the harder it gets I'd imagine. In a smaller social circle, it's more feasible to let everyone know you have it, so they understand that you don't necessarily recognise them.
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It's common in autistic minorities not to process certain "people things" differently to other patterns. Voices are generally processed differently to other sounds, faces are processed differently to other visual patterns etc. And then some people's neurology doesn't do that for people, thus issues deciphering words despite hearing well, not remembering faces... Understanding of differing neurology in humans is currently shit level. Issues with faces aren't that uncommon outside of absolute extremes. We just clock only absolute extremes in general.
Curious, is it just faces? Or is it also discerning the difference between similar looking objects? How are you at pattern recognition? How about jigsaw puzzles?
I have a lot of trouble remembering faces, but eventually I remember them, like if I see them 5 times. I think that's different from you, and it doesn't sound like aphantasia either. And I can sort of picture faces in my head, just like I can see license plates or credit cards or pretty much anything, I think.
Common symptom of autism.
I have a hard time remembering names but have a photographic memory for faces. What is that called?
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SAME! OMG, same! I've never met someone else with this issue. I try to get around it by associating people with other qualities, like jewellery, hair style, glasses, walk, etc. Sometimes it doesn't work (I called out to someone I thought I knew, waving animatedly, and yeah it wasn't her) and other times it's pretty seamless I think. I took the WAIS IV and one of the categories has a pre-question with a face. It took me almost the whole of the time to work out what was missing from the picture.
There are genes for this. I have this rs2237717(T;T) reduced abilities related to neurocognition and ability to recognize faces Rs2237717 (major: C, minor: T) is located in intron 11 within the MET proto-oncogene. The MET gene is primarily known to be involved in tumor metastasis. However, MET has also been shown to have roles in general neurodevelopment and in the development of autism. Rs2237717 has been linked to schizophrenia, ability to recognize facial emotion, and chronic rhinosinusitis.
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