Anyone Here Have Face Blindness?..
 

I always thought it was just one of my 'quirks' - I have a real problem recognizing people...

It gets me in trouble all the time when I ignore people I know really well - Even my own mother.....

I was talking to someone the other day and they said it was an actual thing - Here it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia - I'm brilliant with voices on the phone though...

I watched a really good film about this principle a few years ago...

Cant remember the name, but there was this woman (I wanna say 'Sandra Bullock' but I'm prob wrong) who had the same thing...

She couldn't remember what her Husband looked like - He was played by diff actors throughout the film, to give us her 'point of view' - But it was really good...

She tried using all sorts of tricks to recognise him - Like giving him a distinctive tie to wear and stuff as a b-day pressie...

Like I say - The name escapes me - But if you can find the film, it was worth a watch :)

EDIT: FOUND IT! "Faces in the Crowd'...

Thanks - I will take a look - I have been looking up info all morning - It's interesting stuff - For me anyway:upsidedow...

It's always good to face one's problems head on... :winkwink:

http://jacksonwu.files.wordpress.com...celess-man.jpg

:stoned

ADG

I have a very mild form of it and it is very embarrassing. I am bad with names as well.

I'm with you on names:2 cents:

sitting in front of the computer the whole day away from people will do that to you... :2 cents:

Well I wouldn't know you if you stood up in my cereal. Does that count?

Names, not faces. It makes me feel really stupid at times. Especially at the conventions where people come over and say HEY OY.... and I reply, hey man!

So this will be the only apology I will ever do in that regard. LOL

I seldom forget a face - but I'm brutal for remembering names.

I don't ...

http://es.wahooart.com/Art.nsf/O/6E3...ght)+1964+.JPG

I have this. I read about it in Wired magazine and looked into it. I have a mild form which is mostly embarrassing but I have met people and can't find them in a crowd 20 minutes later. I never know which server is ours. That type of thing. I recognize my kids and real good friends but I have learned to look at body language etc as a clue.

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.............


lemme guess, you have adhd also eh?

Faces aren't a problem, it's names I struggle with.

Usually learn someone's name by attaching something to it which is fine until you are talking to them or about them and actually say Wonky-Eyes-Jenny as you're remembering their name.

This isn't uncommon. The real question that you should be asking is did you have a mini-stroke or have something going on that is causing/caused damage to these regions. If you believe you have this problem, you should see a doctor asap. I didn't read the link, but i've read enough to know that there are a few ways this happens and a few possible areas that can be affected, causing the same end result... there are areas that specialize in recognizing faces alone, in visual patterns etc.

Also, it happens that what you experience is not that you can't "recognize" the face, but that you are not experiencing any appropriate emotion when you see someone you should recognize, causing a sense that you must not know them. This happens often as well (other forms of agnosia) - where you might see your mother, not experience the appropriate flashes of emotion and become convinced she's not really your mother, but someone pretending to be your mother... then of course, if she calls, you process things correctly through unaffected auditory pathways and everything is fine and normal. Our visual processing systems are quite complicated and involve over 30 areas of the brain that just process sight alone (almost 1/3 of our brain dedicated to this), in addition to all the other interrelated systems and feedback loops to check/recheck information against memories, intuition, intuition, emotional feelings etc.

You have no issues with recognizing people on the phone because you are recognizing them through the auditory processing systems which is not related to the currently affected area.

You really do need to see a specialist and have this looked at ASAP. Though it might not affect you in a big way, you are in fact, describing brain damage.

This is most people that don't make a conscious and labored effort to remember. Your brain is a organ for decision making, and primarily concerned with those decisions that are directly tied to survival and reproduction. Its not a fan of unnecessary information and unnecessary conscious process's as they are inefficient, they are cumbersome and slow and cost a great deal of energy. This is why conscious mental processes account for probably less than 1% of the brains total activity.

have a hard time with names, think I zone out when being introduced, seem to remember females better especially if my cock was in them or I'd like it to be :2 cents:

this *diagnosis* is nothing more than a boutique designer ailment not unlike adhd. it wasn't even invented (discovered, lol) until a couple years ago. i don't see this recog issue as a stroke or related to a stroke or hit on the head, those have both been researched and studied for decades and decades and the related issues are documented.

i see this more as a selective recog issue. just like selective hearing

Well, i can safely assume that I am the only one here that has read probably 5 books in the last 2 weeks on neuroscience alone with disorders like this discussed in great detail in most of them and am the only one that doesn't tend to read anything thats not related to psychology (primarily interested in moral psychology), evolutionary biology and neuroscience (primarily interested in theories on consciousness awareness and general brain functions).

There are many forms of agnosia. There is nothing new about not being able to recognize faces as there is an area of the brain responsible specifically for facial recognition and many other areas that can be affected with similar results as i mentioned above. It's very simple. A part of brain recognizes faces. Pathways to that part of the brain or that area itself are damaged or disrupted. Result... difficulty recognizing faces.

Not sure why that would be so difficult to understand. Furthermore, its quite odd that you would be driven to deny it.

To say it was only discovered a couple years ago is obviously wrong since its been well studied and well documented in many forms for well over a century.

ok, if you want to go this route.

The disorder was thought to be exceedingly rare and mainly a result of brain injury. Until a few years ago, there were perhaps 100 documented cases, says Ken Nakayama, a professor of psychology at Harvard.

Ken Nakayama is the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Harvard University. He is most recently known for his work on prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces.
He received his BA from Haverford College and PhD from UCLA. From 1971 to 1990, he was at the Smith Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco. Since then, he has been faculty at Harvard University. He helped in the formation of Vision Sciences Society and was its first president.

i'm sure your 5 books are equivalent though eh.

So... you say its not real, you offer a wrong explanation as to the cause, say it was only recently discovered which is 100% incorrect... then post a blurb that says it's real.

And you quote a piece of text that continues to say this:

"The new study showed that prosopagnosia (from Greek prosopon for face and agnosia for ignorance) is highly heritable and surprisingly common, afflicting, in some form, about 1 in 50 people - more than 5 million in USA alone."

Interesting.

I've woken up with a few faces I'd like to forget.

no. i actually was open to discussing/debating our views. until you went off with your comments re: lack of understanding etc.

again, it was discovered in 2006, according to a leading researcher. and i am speaking to this specific self-diagnosis.

1891: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosia

You are basically saying that diabetes was discovered last week and providing zero proof. Its amusing, but oddly disturbing.

pretty sure the topic is re: Prosopagnosia, not agnosia.

checking............yup. the topic is about Prosopagnosia not agnosia.

Ah... .right.

"the term prosopagnosia was first used in 1947 by Joachim Bodamer, a German neurologist"

A moment of rare fortuitousness where he named something that wouldn't even be discovered until 59 years later (according to you).

again, the leading researcher is otr stating there were only 100 documented cases of this until 2006. my comment went towards that.


Not sure why that would be so difficult to understand. Furthermore, its quite odd that you would be driven to deny it.

Sometimes the urge to gnaw your own arm off rather than wake them up is overwhelming. :1orglaugh

again, just like adhd, as soon as people heard about it, many self-diagnosed themselves with it.

Funny, I could have swore you said it didn't exist until a couple years ago and then explained it as being something that it is so clearly not.

i remember faces very well and used to be good with names too - but in the recent years i started to forget more and more - must be getting old

i think you can sort out that i type posts quickly, i don't necc waste time on a writing an award winning piece for gfy.

my stating it was not innvented/discovered until a couple years ago is tantamount to meaning that it was not known in the mainstream or by non-researchers until it made the news and people then claimed they have it.

again, just like adhd. either way, i'm sure there's a pill for it right around the corner.

Got it. So you stating incorrectly that it was invented (which is clearly is not) or discovered a "couple years ago" which it clearly wasn't, and explaining the "cause" which is clearly wrong on every level, was actually meant to be interpreted as "since it was discovered, many people claim to have it". Obviously, i am the one with poor communication skills - thanks for pointing that out.

Let me walk you through another fundamentally common phenomena of psychology that you are having trouble with.

People don't know what it is, until they know what it is. People don't know others have it until they know others have it. People can't say they have something if they don't know what to call it. People don't often announce things about themselves that they feel ashamed of or that makes them feel different or freakish until they feel safe or comfortable in doing so, and many never do.

Synethesia (in all its various forms as with Agnosia) is a great example of that very thing and why it is also poorly studied in spite of also being very common. People aren't in the habit of running around telling others they see faces in colors or days of the week in colors or experience distinct tastes when they touch various surfaces/textures or seeing numbers floating in space in front of them in a specific location and orientation. They do however start coming out when they start to understand they are not alone and when they know what to call it and know how to explain it and learn to understand it themselves.

i'm not going to let you walk me through anything squealer.

what i am going to do is try and get this thread back on track because i actually like the op, and my comments have been taken wrong here.

my comment that is a designer ailment discovered only recently goes to the op comment that in talking with a friend on the tele, he figures he has the ailment.

while i know eddy starts quite a few ailment threads, i had this in mind when i used squealer's post to state that it is popular to self-diagnose with these sorts of things and, as i mentioned, just like adhd.

yes, i said it was discovered recently and i meant that. it was discovered by mainstream.

if you want to gotcha me on that, feel free, or you can try and see what i was attempting to communicate.

it's risky to self-diagnose and it's also an easy excuse for behavior. i ignore my mother because i can't recognize her face was the op's example behavior.


and ftr, i like you too, squealer. not sure why you had to come out swinging in reaction to my view and replying in general to your post.

anyhoo, it was not at all my intent to derail this thread, and i apologize my comments were vague enough to be taken that way.

i was trying to bring awareness to self-diagnosing these ailments that only recently are discovered by people in the news.

i am very good with faces , but not with the names.

Not even an enchanted forest, at midnight, holding hands?

I am good with faeces as well... :thumbsup

:1orglaugh


if had agnosia and could forget it ever happened, sure.

i keed squealer.

I found out that if I use I use a name, 3 times, it sticks...

ie, I meet you and you say your name is 'Tom'

I'll say - Hi TOM, then during our convo I'll say 'Nice one TOM' and as we depart, I say See yah later TOM...

It seems to stick.... Try it - It really DOES work :)

I have this "problem"... but only because I tend to look through people than at them heh

No one denies the inherent risks of self diagnosing. I don't disagree with that which is why I specifically said "you need to go see a doctor".

My reaction was to your statements that had no basis in reality while attempting to discredit everything I said which is very basic stuff.

There are no discussions of neurological brain function without discussion of those functions misfiring and the accompanying effects, disorders, diseases etc.... as that is where the vast majority of knowledge comes from - understanding what is and isn't affected by stimulating/inhibiting different areas or neurological pathways.

There are typically no comprehensive discussions of visual systems in humans without the accompanying discussion of basic neurological conditions such as Agnosia and its many forms, including obviously, Prosopagnosia as it all goes hand in hand in understanding how the entire system works and fails. It's not an "invented" disorder. It's not recently discovered and it's not, to use your made up term/diagnosis, having anything to do with "selective precog" or related to what i can assume is your misuse of the word "precognition" or precognitive experiences.

Though i've avoided trying to say it outright, this can be caused by a tumor for example. Obviously, if there is a sincere problem with recognizing faces, then it should be looked into by doctors to be safe. It's not helpful to say "this is invented" when it could be a symptom of something lethal.

I don't have anything against you at all. This is something that interests me a great deal. I simply wanted to correct the facts by making the point that it is definitely not made up. Whether he has it is another question entirely.

The fact that he included the bit about knowing people by phone is again consistent with Agnosia - indicating that if he did self diagnos himself, he had to educate himself and then add this detail which seems unlikely.

Any by the way, unless I am wrong, I believe this is commonly tested by measuring GSR (galvanic skin response - as lie detectors use) and showing pictures of faces that should be familiar and measuring your bodies response GSR to those images.

thanks for the clarification, i can see how my comment could be construed to discredit what you said, that was not my intent, i apologize. i was quoting your comment as a springboard to carry the convo forward.

:stoned

ADG

No worries, its just a forum :)

I apologize for getting a little pissy :)