Prosopagnosia, Or Face Blindness

Visual agnosia refers to the “…inability to recognize objects that results neither from general intellectual loss nor from a loss of basic sensory abilities,” (Anderson, 2009, p. 32). There are generally two types of visual agnosia: apperceptive agnosia and associative agnosia. Apperceptive agnosia is the inability to recognize or draw simple shapes as they are shown or represented. Associative agnosia is the ability to recognize and copy drawings of simple and complex shapes. However, person with associative agnosia are unable to recognize the complex objects (Anderson, 2009).

The United States has many minority groups that face oppression. In the media today, most of the minority issues that are highlighted involve the LGBTQ community, women, and racial minorities. Differently-abled people are rarely given the space to share with the world how they see it. This literature review will discuss terms related to visual impairment, legislative measures taken in the United States to assist those with severe visual impairments, and the oppression and discrimination those who are visually impaired face.

Prosopagnosia, also called face blindness, is a neuropsychological condition that refers to impairment in the recognition of faces. Although prosopagnosic patients suffer from other types of recognition impairments (place recognition, car recognition, facial expression of emotion, est.), they experience face recognition problems above or over other types impairments. Prosopagnosia occurs without intellectual, sensory or cognitive impairments; in other words, people with prosopagnosia can still recognize people from non-facial cues. They cannot recognize familiar people by their faces alone, and often use alternative routes to alleviate the effects of this impairment. These routes include

Psychology has remained a progressive science due to the many contributions of influential leaders. In this paper I will mention three historical figures who I believe were important in the development of the field of psychology in the past and till this day. Paul Ekman is an American psychologist who became a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He was born in 1934, Washington D.C., he graduated with a Ph. D in clinical psychology from the Adelphi University. Following his work in clinical psychology, he became a consultant in the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute. Ekman is known as the “human lie detector” due to his expertise in the physiology of emotion, his ability to detect deception and his

Dr. P, a musician and teacher who had developed visual agnosia, had difficulty processing what he sees, especially faces, he could only identify them by features which he remembered. He only completed tasks if he was singing, if interrupted, he could no longer remember what he was doing nor complete it. Sacks diagnosed Dr. P with prosopagnosia, the inability to identify

Imagine lacking the ability to recognize the familiar face of a loved one or spouse. Or having to rely on voices, clothing, and certain attributes of that individual in order to have some kind of knowledge on who they actually are. This condition is defined as Prosopagnosia; known as face blindness or facial agnostic. According to Barton (2008), it was first described as a consequence of cerebral damage by Quaking and Bordello in 1867. This term comes from the Greek word “face” and “lack of knowledge.” Stated by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (2007), Prosopagnosia is anticipated to be the result of damages, abnormalities, or destruction in the right fusiform gyrus; part of the brain that controls the perception of faces and the functionality of memory in the neural system. This deficit can be present from birth, the result of a stroke, a traumatic brain injury, or neurodegenerative diseases. In order to help an individual with Prosopagnosia, it is essential to develop compensatory or redeeming strategies, as well as the use of clues or attributes to help them better identify individuals.

In chapter one, Sacks talks about a patient dubbed Dr P, who was a musician, singer, artist, and a teacher at the Local of Music. Dr P had problems recognizing his students’ faces, which is when his problems were first recognized. He could not recognize people until they started talking or moving, and would see faces where there were none, such as in furniture, water hydrants, and parking meters. However, this did not seem to trouble him, and did not seek any sort of medical help, until years later when he developed diabetes. He went to an ophthalmologist, who told him his vision was fine, but that there was something the matter with the visual part of his brain. That was when he was referred to Oliver Sacks, a neurologist.

Chuck Close suffers from Prosopagnosia also known as face blindness. He figured out a way of how he can remember faces. He takes a photo of them then, grid’s it out then paints it on a canvas five times its original size. He also creates portraits of his friends,

Change blindness occurs when the observer does not noticed any changes in their visual field.

This essay will talk about face recognition and several reasons why it has been studied separately. The ability to recognise faces is of huge significance of people’s daily life and differs in important ways from other forms of object recognition (Bruce and Young, 1986). Than this essay will talk about the processes involved in face recognition which comes from the diversity of research about familiar and unfamiliar faces-it includes behavioural studies, studies on brain-damaged patients, and neuroimaging studies. Finally, it will discuss how face recognition differs from the recognition of other object by involving more holistic or configuration processing and different areas of the brain (Eysenck & Keane, 2005).

Prosopagnosia is defined as the difficulty in recognizing an individuals face; it is broken down into 3 main types; Apperceptive prosopagnosia, associative prosopagnosia and developmental prosopagnosia. Perception is an important aspect when recognizing faces, without recognizing the stimulus (face) you would not be able to identify a person. Therefore the individuals who sufferer from this disorder is unable to accurately recognize a face whether that be the face of a familiar person such as a family member or close friend, the face of a famous person, or even their own face. This paper will look at prosopagnosia in greater detail, it will explain the 3 main types, as well as give insight as to why face recognition is important in our

Typically, a word that those without an ophthalmologist’s educational background wouldn’t pay much attention to. For me, the word amblyopia makes every single experience in my life vastly different. When I was very young, about 2 years old, I was diagnosed with Amblyopia with Strabismus. Amblyopia with Strabismus is a disorder affecting the quality of vision as well as the alignment of the eyes in approximately 2 to 3 percent of the world. After countless ventures to my eye doctor and hundreds of tests, it was found that I had 20/2400 vision, making me legally blind in my left eye with perfect vision in my right. This left me with a severely lacking depth perception and the inability to catch or throw practically anything.

Agnosia is defined as the inability to recognize objects through the processing of sensory information, which means there is no deficit in semantic memory or problems with naming objects. An individual suffering from agnosia still possesses all the relevant semantic information tied to a precept, but they cannot recognize the precept when it is presented to them and therefore trigger the recall of said information. There are many types of agnosia, but this essay will focus on visual object agnosia and prosopagnosia. The former is the inability to recognise objects: patients suffering from visual object agnosia do not have impaired vision, and in some cases can even copy the object they are seeing (patient H.J.A., Humphreys & Riddoch, 1987) or draw it from memory (patient D.F., Milner & Goodale, 1992), but are unable to recognize it when they see it. In the latter, prosopagnosia, patients cannot recognise faces of familiar individuals, and have to rely on other characteristics such as their voice or clothing to recognize them. Patients suffering from prosopagnosia can either acquire it through a lesion in relevant brain areas (acquired prosopagnosia) or for less understood reasons have it from birth, in which case it is termed developmental prosopagnosia. The study of patients with agnosia is integral to the field of visual recognition, as the specifics of their deficits can provide great insight into the ways our brain processes information; for example, the location of

In this essay descriptions as well as identifications of research evidence for both Bruce and Young’s 1986 cognitive model of face recognition and Burton, Bruce and Johnston’s 1990 cognitive model of face recognition; which are then applied to two separate case studies and an explanation of which better suits each shall be given. For the purposes of this essay, Bruce and Young’s 1986 model shall be theory 1, and Burton, Bruce and Johnston’s 1990 model, shall be theory 2.

Vision challenge or impairment is when a person’s degree of seeing is very low and the affected person requires assistance in order to carry out daily routine. Significantly, for one to qualify as visually impaired there must be prove that a person cannot undertake duties by himself without necessary assistance. For a person to qualify as a visually challenged, there must be a prove that the affected eyes cannot be conventionally treated. Visual challenge cannot be corrected by surgery, refractive measures neither by medication and that is why it is termed as visual impairment. The most rampart causes of visual challenge are trauma, degenerative or congenital means and a variety of diseases. In the society,