The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in the United States revealed that “prosopagnosia”, a rare neurological disease with many faces, affects 1 in 50 people worldwide.
Some sufferers find it difficult to recognize the faces of people close to them, while others find it difficult to distinguish unknown faces.
Researchers from Harvard University conducted a set of facial recognition tests for more than 3,000 people, and found that the results were very poor, with more than 5% of the respondents infected.
People with this disorder may cope by using alternative ways of recognizing people, such as remembering how they walk, hairstyle, voice, or clothing.
The “face blindness” syndrome affected the international star, Brad Pitt, who indicated that he struggled a lot to recognize the faces of the people around him.
Causes of “face blindness” syndrome
Face blindness syndrome occurs as a result of a stroke, or some diseases that lead to the death of neurons and shrinking of the brain.
The disease can also be congenital from birth, or as a result of a genetic mutation, which leads scientists to interpret it as a genetic disease. Some children with autism develop a degree of prosopagnosia.
The treatment depends on developing mechanisms that enable the patient to recognize people, such as focusing on their voices.
‘His patients suffer in silence’
Dr. Jamil Babli, Consultant of Applied Brain Sciences, explained that “face blindness” syndrome is a rare neurological disease that affects the area of the brain responsible for distinguishing faces, whether familiar or unknown.
Babli said, in an interview with Al-Arabi from Lusail, that the patient with this syndrome suffers in silence, because he cannot recognize faces, and a kind of distortion may occur in seeing faces, so that the face appears different from the real one.
He explained that the eye examination does not show the disease, and that the severity of the disease may lead to forgetting faces as well.
Babli pointed out that there is currently no medical treatment for “face blindness” syndrome, and all that the doctor offers is a behavioral strategy to deal with the disease.