What is prosopagnosia?
ACTOR Brad Pitt revealed in a recent interview that he believes he suffers from prosopagnosia.
The prognosis is a neurological disease that affects approximately 1 in 50 people.
What is prosopagnosia?
Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is often diagnosed at birth but can be generative.
The neurological disorder prevents the individual from recognizing faces, often requiring them to rely on someone’s voice, hair, or clothes to identify them.
Those afflicted with prosopagnosia don’t experience memory loss or vision impairment, the disorder only negates their ability to recognize and differentiate one face from another.
The severity can range from being unable to recognize a family member or friend’s face to not being able to recognize one’s own reflection.
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Obtaining a diagnosis can be a lengthy process with doctors taking the individual through a series of tests designed to determine face recognition.
Throughout the process, doctors work to ensure they have explored all other options such as another neurological disease, before confirming that it is prosopagnosia.
Symptoms of prosopagnosia include:
- Trouble identifying faces in person or in photographs
- Inability to describe faces
- Confusion when watching TV shows or movies that contain numerous characters
- Feeling of disorientation in crowded places
What are the long-term effects of prosopagnosia?
Evidence found in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research found that people who have prosopagnosia may develop anxiety or become depressed because of the isolation they feel from not recognizing others.
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The disorder can cause an inability to navigate social interactions and over time, some people will start avoiding their friends and family out of fear that they won’t notice them or recognize someone if they pass by.
The official diagnosis would be a social anxiety disorder, which is an overwhelming fear of social situations.
Studies are still being conducted on what causes prosopagnosia and researchers are working to develop programs that would help improve facial recognition.
Heather Sellers, author of a book called You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, told TIME in 2010 that suffering from prosopagnosia feels like you have a learning disability.
“It’s like dyslexia,” she said. “I know what a face is, but it’s really hard to read faces.
“[With dyslexia] you know what the word is, but you are going a lot more by context and takes a lot of work [to figure it out]. It feels like walking uphill into the wind.”
What did Brad Pitt say about prosopagnosia?
Brad Pitt, 58, opened up about his struggles to recognize those around him, announcing he has prosopagnosia.
Although Pitt has never been formally diagnosed, he told GQ that he has trouble differentiating faces and remembering new people, saying he has prosopagnosia, but added, “No one believes me!”
This was not the first time Pitt has alluded to the disorder. In 2013, he told Esquire that he meets the same people over and over again, but he’ll have already forgotten their faces by the time they start walking away.
“So many people hate me because they think I’m disrespecting them,” he said.
“So I swear to God, I took one year where I just said, This year, I’m just going to cop to it and say to people, ‘Okay, where did we meet?’ But it just got worse. People were more offended.
“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.’ But it’s a mystery to me, man.
“I can’t grasp a face and yet I come from such a design/aesthetic point of view. I am going to get it tested.”
The result of this realization caused Pitt to spend many nights alone as he slowly stopped interacting with people.
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Dr. Andrey Stojic, director of general neurology at the Cleveland Clinic, told the New York Times, “Many of the challenges he’s describing, the problems he has, are not atypical for folks who experience it.”
He added, “It be can relatively debilitating for people. It’s hard for other people to understand.”