- Humans are really good at remembering faces. So good that we actually have a dedicated part of our brain designed just for this. Face Blindness, also officially known as *Prosopagnosia*, is a medical condition where the part of your brain that's responsible for recognizing and classifying human faces doesn't work. - This is not a very well known medical condition, but some estimates put the occurrence as high as 2.5% of the general population. If that is the case, it's a cause of discomfort for a lot of people - It's a [spectrum](https://www.today.com/health/prosopagnosia-disorder-face-blindness-brad-pitt-rcna34790): "If you look in the general population, there's a spectrum of face recognition abilities," said Duchaine. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. “Some people are fantastic. We call those people super recognizers, and then people who are really on the low end of the tail are called prosopagnosics ... maybe the bottom 2%,” Duchaine said. It can range from mild or moderate to more severe. - People affected by prosopagnosia suffer in a different way from those affected by other common medical conditions. Mental conditions are tricky because they aren't very obvious. You can't tell if someone is suffering from something or if they just have a personality issue. And prosopagnosia can really seem like a personality problem. - - *"I avoid conferences, parties, and large gatherings as much as I can, knowing that they will lead to anxiety and embarrassing situations, since I not only fail to recognize people that I know well but tend also to greet strangers as old friends. (Like many prosopagnosics, I avoid greeting people by name, lest I use the wrong one, and I depend on others to save me from egregious social blunders.)"* - Someone suffering from face blindness can look at face value like they just don't care about you. You slip out of their world as if you didn't matter at all. It's not fun to be forgotten. In rarer cases, it can be so severe that it can have significant impacts on a personal life. I read one report from an author who mentioned that at one point they looked into a mirror and briefly didn't realize that they were looking at themselves. - What can make prosopagnosia even harder is that a lot of people who suffer from it probably don't realize that they're affected by it. Thankfully, humans have a few ways of classifying even faces. In addition to that core part of the brain that's designed and optimized just for it, we're also pretty good at adapting and classifying things using object recognition. We can keep track of someone's height, behavioral tics, the facial hair they have, their age, common birthmarks and signs, tattoos, gait, styling choices, voice and so on. This can work well enough that a lot of people may get by without realizing they deal in this condition. - *"Perhaps this “flattening” allows him to memorize certain features. Although I myself may be unable to recognize a particular face, I can recognize various things *about* a face: that there is a large nose, a pointed chin, tufted eyebrows, or protruding ears. Such features become the identifying markers by which I recognize people. (I think that, for similar reasons, I find it easier to recognize a caricature than a straightforward portrait or a photograph.)"* - *"And, even if I cannot recognize particular faces, I am sensitive to the beauty of faces, and to their expressions."* - I've always wondered if I suffer from a form of prosopagnosia. I have an incredibly hard time describing people even shortly after we've met. I've tried to develop an object classification system of my own for faces, but it's really crude. And something that I would love to develop. - One thing that surprised me when I started doing a bit of research this morning is just how poorly documented this condition seems to be. - There do seem to be solutions to improve people's sensitivity towards faces using perceptual learning - It can be the result of genetics, but can also develop over time as a result of tumors, infections, injuries, or degenerative diseases like dementia. - Living with prosopagnosia can have benefits. Chuck Close, an artist who's famous for large portraits of people, believes that it's had a big impact on his art style. - Our ability to recognize faces is formed from a really early age, but it is trained and it is plastic. There is a study in which babies were shown faces from a number of different species and ethnicities, including monkeys. They were able to recognize these faces as early as three months, but a few months later they had lost the ability to recognize those faces effectively if they hadn't continued being exposed to them. - I haven't seen too many examples of solutions for this problem. - One article mentions Dr. Sarah Bait, who seems to be developing a face training program. So it might be worth reaching out to her. - Someone has built a [wearable device](https://gkanaan.com/ieeeprosopagnosia2020.pdf) to assist with training for face recognition - One study suggests that focusing on ears and facial marks has a much bigger impact than focusing on face shape or mouths. # Tests - [Psychology Experiments: Cambridge Face Memory Test](URL: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/psychologyexperiments/experiments/facememorytest/startup.php?r=8&p=0&d=1&dn=0&g=0&m=68f7d848edeaebd6cc29371b806b3017) - A 20 minute test that shows you a number of faces and then has you pick them out in increasingly harder circumstances. - I scored 88 out of 100, which was a little surprising to me. Any score below 60 is a sign that you might be suffering. ![[CleanShot 2024-03-30 at 07.55.12.mp4]] - [PI20 | troublewithfaces.org](URL: https://www.troublewithfaces.org/test-yourself-1)! - 20 item prosopagnosia test - I scored 71, which indicates that I might be affected somewhat by this - [Test My Brain](URL: https://www.testmybrain.org/tests/start) - Online test of famous faces - Warrington Recognition Memory for Faces (RMF) [51] and the Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT) - [Warrington's Recognition Memory Test in the Detection of Response Bias | Request PDF](URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254368140_Warrington's_Recognition_Memory_Test_in_the_Detection_of_Response_Bias) - [Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT)](https://lab.faceblind.org/papers/duchaine03neuropsychologia.pdf) # Apps - [Prosopang](https://mept.se/prosopag.html) - a very simple game on the app store that allows you to add faces and test yourself by matching it to a name. - [Name Shark](https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/name-shark/id906531062) - more of a name remembering app but could be useful for people who suffer from this # Books - *Nothing yet...* # Famous People - [Brad Pitt](https://www.today.com/health/prosopagnosia-disorder-face-blindness-brad-pitt-rcna34790) - "He fears it’s led to a certain impression of him: that he’s remote and aloof, inaccessible, self-absorbed. But the truth is, he wants to remember the people he meets and he’s ashamed that he can’t,” Moshfegh wrote. - "So many people hate me because they think I’m disrespecting them,” he said. “Every now and then, someone will give me context, and I’ll say, ‘Thank you for helping me.’ But I piss more people off. You get this thing, like, ‘You’re being egotistical. You’re being conceited.’ - [Jane Goodall](URL: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/face-blind) - *"Jane Goodall also has a certain degree of prosopagnosia. Her problems extend to recognizing chimpanzees as well as people—thus, she says, she is often unable to distinguish individual chimps by their faces. Once she knows a particular chimp well, she ceases to have difficulties; similarly, she has no problem with family and friends. But, she says, “I have huge problems with people with ‘average’ faces. . . . I have to search for a mole or something. I find it very embarrassing! I can be all day with someone and not know them the next day.”"* # Links - [Training face perception in developmental prosopagnosia through perceptual learning - ScienceDirect](URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393219302386) - A training program using a perceptual learning approach improved perceptual sensitivity for faces in individuals with developmental prosopagnosia. - The effects of the training program generalized to new views and expressions of trained faces and persisted for at least three months. - The training program resulted in greater improvement during the training period compared to the non-training period, as indicated by a significant main effect of intervention. - *"Perceptual sensitivity for faces improved after training but did not improve after the control task. Improvement generalized to untrained expressions and views of these faces, and there was some evidence of transfer to new faces. Benefits were maintained over three months. Training also led to improvements on standard [neuropsychological tests](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/neuropsychological-test "Learn more about neuropsychological tests from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages") of short-term familiarity, and some subjects reported positive effects in daily life."* - *"The face, psychoanalysts consider, is the first object to acquire visual meaning and significance."* - *"Parties, even my own birthday parties, are a challenge. (More than once, Kate has asked my guests to wear name tags.) I have been accused of “absent-mindedness,” and no doubt this is true. But I think that a significant part of what is variously called my “shyness,” my “reclusiveness,” my “social ineptitude,” my “eccentricity,” even my “Asperger’s syndrome,” is a consequence and a misinterpretation of my difficulty recognizing faces."* - *"Many prosopagnosics recognize people by voice, posture, or gait; and, of course, context and expectation are paramount—one expects to see one’s students at school, one’s colleagues at the office, and so on. Such strategies, both conscious and unconscious, become so automatic that people with moderate prosopagnosia can remain unaware of how poor their facial recognition actually is, and are startled if it is revealed to them by testing"* - *"The artist Chuck Close, who is famous for his gigantic portraits of faces, has severe, lifelong prosopagnosia. He believes it has played a crucial role in driving his unique artistic vision"* - *"Perhaps this “flattening” allows him to memorize certain features. Although I myself may be unable to recognize a particular face, I can recognize various things *about* a face: that there is a large nose, a pointed chin, tufted eyebrows, or protruding ears. Such features become the identifying markers by which I recognize people. (I think that, for similar reasons, I find it easier to recognize a caricature than a straightforward portrait or a photograph.)"* - *"And, even if I cannot recognize particular faces, I am sensitive to the beauty of faces, and to their expressions."* - *"I avoid conferences, parties, and large gatherings as much as I can, knowing that they will lead to anxiety and embarrassing situations, since I not only fail to recognize people that I know well but tend also to greet strangers as old friends. (Like many prosopagnosics, I avoid greeting people by name, lest I use the wrong one, and I depend on others to save me from egregious social blunders.)"* - *"In humans, some ability to recognize faces is present at birth or soon after. By six months, as Olivier Pascalis et al. have shown in one study, babies are able to recognize a broad variety of individual faces, including those of another species (in this study, pictures of monkeys were used). By nine months, though, the babies had become less adept at recognizing the monkey faces unless they had received continuing exposure to them. As early as three months, infants are learning to narrow their model of “faces” to those they are frequently exposed to."* - *"Ken Nakayama, at Harvard, who investigates visual perception, has long suspected that prosopagnosia is relatively common but underreported. In 2001, he and his colleague Brad Duchaine, at University College, London, began seeking subjects with face blindness through their Web site, and they received an impressive response. Nakayama and Duchaine are now investigating several thousand people with lifelong prosopagnosia, ranging from mild to cripplingly severe."* - [Prosopagnosia Research Center - Faceblind](URL: https://www.faceblind.org/) - A research centre specialising in... a resource collection specialising in prosopagnosia has a lot of great links, a great introduction, and a decade of newsletters that I'd like to explore - [What is prosopagnosia, face blindness disorder Brad Pitt blames for not recognizing faces?](URL: https://www.today.com/health/prosopagnosia-disorder-face-blindness-brad-pitt-rcna34790) - *"Where prosopagnosics really struggle is when they see people out of context, like bumping into a co-worker at the grocery store. “People with prosopagnosia are more likely to recognize family and close friends than they are to recognize people they’re not as close to, but they still sometimes have trouble recognizing faces they’ve seen thousands of times," Duchaine said."* - [One in 50 of us is face blind – and many don’t even realise | Health & wellbeing | The Guardian](URL: https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2018/jan/29/one-in-50-of-us-is-face-blind-and-many-dont-even-realise) - *"Dr Sarah Bate, an associate professor of psychology at Bournemouth University, is developing face-training programs to help those with face blindness learn management tools"* - [The Hidden Social Struggles of Face Blindness — Seattle Psychiatrist — Seattle Anxiety Specialists - Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychotherapy](URL: https://seattleanxiety.com/psychiatrist/2023/7/20/the-hidden-social-struggles-of-face-blindness) - *"Prosopagnosia tends to go relatively unnoticed not only because of its rarity but also because those who have it are skillful at working around their disability[\[3\]](https://seattleanxiety.com/psychiatrist/2023/7/20/the-hidden-social-struggles-of-face-blindness#end1) or hiding it.  Additionally, recruitment for research on the subject becomes difficult, as those who have it may not always be aware if they have grown accustomed to having this deficit."* - *"Often, those with face blindness will develop coping strategies to alleviate daily challenges. Dalrymple et al. (2014) found that strategies to mitigate distress in children included asking a person’s name and remembering non-facial elements of a person’s appearance such as jewelry or hair."* - [Face-blind people can learn to tell similar shapes apart | Nature](URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.14916) - *"People who are unable to recognize faces can still learn to distinguish between other types of very similar objects, researchers report. The finding provides fresh support for the idea that the brain mechanisms that process face images are specialized for that task. It also offers evidence against an 'expertise' hypothesis, in which the same mechanisms are responsible for recognition of faces and other highly similar objects we have learned to tell apart — the way bird watchers can recognize birds after years of training."* - [New Promise for Those Who Suffer from Face Blindness | Scientific American](URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-promise-for-those-who-suffer-from-face-blindness/) - *"Unfortunately, face blindness seems largely resilient to improvement. Yet a very recent study offers more promising findings: children’s face-recognition skills substantially improved after they played a modified version of the game Guess Who?over a two-week period.In the traditional version of Guess Who?, two players see an array of 24 cartoon faces, and each selects a target. Both then take turns asking yes/no questions about the appearance of their opponent’s chosen face, typically inquiring about eye color, hairstyle and accessories such as hats or spectacles. The players use the answers to eliminate faces in the array; when only one remains, they can guess the identity of their opponent’s character."* - [New Promise for Those Who Suffer from Face Blindness | Scientific American](URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-promise-for-those-who-suffer-from-face-blindness/) - *"The experimental version of the game preserved this basic setup but used lifelike faces that differed only in the size or spacing of the eyes, nose or mouth. That is, the hairstyle and outer face shape were identical, and children had to read the faces solely on the basis of small differences between the inner features. This manipulation is thought to reflect a key processing strategy that underlies human face recognition: the ability to account not only for the size and shape of features but also the spacing between them."* - [New Promise for Those Who Suffer from Face Blindness | Scientific American](URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-promise-for-those-who-suffer-from-face-blindness/) - *"Compared with those in a control condition (children who played only the traditional version of Guess Who? at the same intervals), those who played the modified game showed, on average, an 8 percent improvement in face memory after training, and this result was maintained one month later."* - [New Promise for Those Who Suffer from Face Blindness | Scientific American](URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-promise-for-those-who-suffer-from-face-blindness/) - *"Strikingly, face-recognition ability also has a long developmental trajectory and continues to improve throughout early adulthood until age 30."* - [New Promise for Those Who Suffer from Face Blindness | Scientific American](URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-promise-for-those-who-suffer-from-face-blindness/) - *"Critically, then, the Guess Who?study challenges the long-standing notion that face training is futile."* - [The six-minute training hack that can improve face recognition skills](URL: https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2021/12/the-six-minute-training-hack-that-can-improve-face-recognition-s) - *"Rather than focus on the face holistically – which is the usual way the human brain processes faces –  participants were directed to look at two specific areas of the face that turned out to be the strongest diagnostic features. - “By looking at the ears and facial markings like moles, freckles and scars, people can boost their natural ability in this task, with training that lasts just six minutes,” lead researcher Dr Alice Towler says. - “It turns out that breaking up a face into parts – like a jigsaw – is a useful strategy when matching unfamiliar faces. This is something that only a small number of face recognition professionals have been trained to do.”"* - *"To test this hypothesis, Dr Towler and her research team designed an experiment where two groups of novice face identifiers were given different training – one were told to focus on the ears and facial marks, the other, the face shape and mouth. By the end of the training, participants in the first group showed a 6 per cent improvement on their abilities in matching unfamiliar faces, whereas those focusing on face shape and the mouth showed no change in their accuracy."* - [Can technology help face blindness ? | by Lam Yee Man Nick | Medium](URL: https://medium.com/@lamyeemanick/can-technology-help-face-blindness-43ce845c9e75) - *"## CertiFaced and what did we go through? Even before we had an identity on the project, we obviously studied the question “Are prosopagnosics ready to welcome such a project into their daily lives?” So I have been in Facebook communities and talked about the project. People were mostly receptive but above all very constructive. No one really categorically rejected the idea but gave us advice on what to do and what not to do, they also gave us their preferences on the different approaches to a product as it is."* - A couple of students have the idea of using facial recognition in wearable cameras to help with this. - [Research – Prosopagnosia](URL: https://psyc.bbk.ac.uk/prosopagnosia/research/) - *"Our research at the [Brain and Behaviour Lab](http://brainb.psyc.bbk.ac.uk/) aims to gain new insights into the information processing stages involved in face recognition. This is achieved by combining behavioural and ERP markers of face-specific processing stages in typical adults and in adults with face recognition problems such as prosopagnosia. We can use our knowledge of the time-course of face processing stages in typical adults to address which face processing stages are impaired in prosopagnosia."* - [Take this test to find out how talented you are at recognizing faces - The Verge](URL: https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/7/15220230/cambridge-face-memory-test-faceblindness-super-recognizer?showComments=1) - a Verge article that mentions the Cambridge face memory test. It's really well written, kind of in a very informal style. https://apple.news/A2OlYPdQPRKmU7-e52pScEA