Imagine walking into your favorite bar after work to meet up with some mates. It’s dimly-lit and crowded. You check the usual booth for familiar faces. They are nowhere in sight. You get discouraged, hang your head, and start for the door. Just then, your mates in the booth call your name and push a chair out for you. You had looked straight at them, but hadn’t recognized them... Imagine again, being stopped abruptly in the street by an attractive member of the opposite sex. They are speaking to you as if they’ve known you for years. At the same time, you are thinking, “I have no idea who this person is, but damn, I wish I recognized them.” These situations maybe difficult, or even bizarre to imagine, but they’re likely and far too familiar for people who suffer from prosopagnosia.

Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is an interesting disorder revealed just over half a century ago. The term prosopagnosia is derived from Greek: prosop meaning “face”, and agnosi meaning “without knowledge”. Accordingly, those affected with the disorder lack the ability to recognize distinguishable facial features in humans. In the most extreme cases, sufferers are unable to recognize their own mothers, or even themselves in the mirror. More common are milder cases in which the sufferer can identify the familiar from the unfamiliar only by using groups of visual clues such as distinct facial features, voices, hair, body movements, or clothing.

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The ability to recognize faces intuitively develops early on in the life of a child. During a child’s weaning period, he or she learns to distinguish the face of their mother and father, and later on in life applies this to others. Those suffering from the disorder have somehow broken or disrupted the circuitry in the brain responsible for this ability. At present, there is no treatment for prosopagnosia.

In the past, the disorder was believed to be very uncommon, and the rare result of a brain injury or stroke. More recently, German researchers have made breakthrough discoveries about the disorder and it’s origins. Findings published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics state that prosopagnosia may stem from ones genes, and is more common than previously expected. Researchers have narrowed down the cause to a single defective, yet dominant gene. In other words, if either your mother or father has prosopagnosia, then you have a 50% chance of having the disorder. Surprisingly enough, it affects nearly 1 in 50 people, though the degree varies widely.

Worried you might have prosopagnosia? Test your facial recognition skills. I scored a 90%...what about you?

I can hardly imagine what it would be like to live with this condition. It surely causes much frustration among those whom it affects, and their loved ones. To get an idea of what it's like living with prosopagnosia, watch this short documentary.