School has started. I can’t recognize my new classmates and I can’t remember my old classmates. Is there any cure for face blindness?

Review expert: Chen Mingxin, national second-level psychological counselor, senior human resources manager

School starts

But in the new class

Can’t remember the faces of new classmates?

When you walk on campus, someone greets you.

But I can’t react and figure out who he is?

Your deskmate talks to you about a classmate you don't know very well.

Can’t remember what he/she looks like?

......

What to do if you have face blindness?

Is this a disease? Can it be cured?

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Face blindness is really a disease

Face blindness, also known as face amnesia or prosopagnosia, is a cognitive disorder . The symptoms are generally divided into two types: the patient cannot see other people's faces clearly; the patient loses the ability to recognize other people's faces.

New research has found that face blindness, which was once considered extremely rare, is actually quite common around the world .

Mild face blindness can be used to identify a person by some facial details and features, such as clothing, hairstyle, etc. Some can also rely on the voice of others to identify. Some researchers have found that some face blindness patients have better voice recognition ability than ordinary people.

People with severe prosopagnosia may not even recognize their own mothers, and some may even have problems with self-recognition, that is, they do not even recognize themselves in the mirror.

How humans recognize faces

Our brain uses a "holistic processing" mode for face recognition.

In other words, our judgment of human faces is based on the spatial distribution of the facial features, rather than the details of the facial features - such as whether the nose is high or low, and whether the eyes are double eyelids or single eyelids.

This recognition method greatly saves brain resources and reaction time, allowing us to determine whether the person opposite us is an acquaintance or a stranger in a short period of time.

Causes of face blindness

The causes of face blindness can be mainly divided into two categories: congenital (developmental prosopagnosia) and acquired (acquired prosopagnosia) .

Our brain has specialized areas that are responsible for various functions, such as the "auditory area" that processes auditory information and the "language area" that is responsible for language comprehension and expression.

The cognitive process of face recognition involves an entire network of brain regions, among which the fusiform face area is the most important part of the visual system for face recognition.

When the fusiform gyrus is damaged due to cerebrovascular disease, trauma, surgery, etc., acquired prosopagnosia occurs.

Developmental prosopagnosia is a neurodevelopmental disorder, also known as prosopagnosia syndrome, that causes an individual to be unable to recognize or distinguish faces.

Developmental prosopagnosia usually develops in early childhood and may be caused by abnormal development of specific areas of the brain, including the temporal, frontal and occipital lobes, which play an important role in face recognition.

Is it just that you can't see the face clearly?

A long-standing controversy is whether the impaired cognitive function is specific to faces or also affects the processing of other object types.

Because object processing is performed by the visual network, and these areas are also involved in the perceptual processing of other categories of objects, some reports suggest that some people with prosopagnosia also have difficulty with object recognition.

Face and visual word processing share and compete for neural resources in the fusiform gyrus. Visual words rely more on the left fusiform gyrus, while face processing tends to be right lateralized, but the lateralization is not so complete.

Thus, prosopagnosia from right-sided lesions should be accompanied by mild reading deficits, whereas alexia from left-sided lesions should be accompanied by mild face recognition problems.

Can face blindness be treated?

Unfortunately, face blindness remains a medical problem and scientists say there is no cure yet.

People with developmental prosopagnosia may not be able to recognize their parents, siblings, or other familiar people. They may also lack imitation and social skills, making it difficult for them to form emotional connections with others.

Although developmental prosopagnosia may have some impact on patients' daily lives, it is not insurmountable. With early intervention and training, patients can improve their face recognition ability and learn to use other sensory and memory strategies to compensate for this deficiency.

Therefore, even if face blindness cannot be cured, there is no need to have too much psychological burden. As long as you use "external clues", you can still develop a set of skills to recognize people. Moreover, this disease will not threaten your physical health except for affecting daily communication.

References:

Zhongshan Shennei Yinao Intelligent Platform: "Face blindness is really a disease! Some people are so blind that they don't even recognize themselves!"

Guokr: "Experience face blindness: Can you tell something is wrong? The magical blind spot of face recognition!"

Gao Gu Psychology: "Face blindness, turns out to be a disease!"