Prosopagnosia Face Blindness Getting Attention – Prosopagnosia is a condition that can make faces hard to recognize. The condition is often called face blindness, and individuals who suffer from it usually find their ability to recognize other objects still intact. The term was originated from people who had suffered from brain damage, and as a result had trouble recognizing even the faces of people that they had known their whole lives. The area of the brain that is most commonly associated with the condition and facial recognition is known as the fusiform gyrus.
So far, there are very few options in the way of therapy for affected patients. In most therapies for the condition, folks are taught to recognize faces feature-by-feature. This is a long process, and the individual may never regain their ability to recognize faces quickly. Feature-by-feature therapy also teaches them to recognize people based on a series of secondary clues including hair, body type, and even the clothes that the person is wearing. Because the condition directly affects memory, this type of therapy usually gives underwhelming results because the person with the illness may have a hard time remembering any of the secondary clues.
This phenomenon was documented as early as the early 19th century, but was not given its official name until 1947, by Joachim Bodamer, a German neurologist. He had documented three separate cases of the problem, including one man who had been shot in the head and had developed the condition after healing from his wounds. Currently research is still being performed on individuals who suffer from Prosopagnosia to develop a better form of therapy.