Problem with memory for faces. Inability to remember faces, I don’t recognize people - prosopagnosia, or facial agnosia. Division into parts
The ability to remember the faces of people we meet varies greatly among individuals. For many, you need to see a person several times to recognize him by appearance. Some people too easily forget a well-known face, even though they haven’t seen it for some two or three years. On the other hand, many recognize the faces of people they have met, and once received, the impression seems to remain forever, subject to frequent revivals. This ability is especially highly developed among police detectives, hotel keepers, etc., i.e. persons whose occupation brings them into contact with many people and in whose interest it is to remember and recognize those with whom they meet. This is a valuable gift because a new acquaintance will be very friendly to you if you get to know him quickly. Conversely, the inability to recognize people can be taken as an insult and even make them dislike you.
The lack of development of this faculty shows that man has not made particularly energetic use of that part of his mind which notices the appearance and appearance of those with whom he has encountered.
Such people can only look at others, but not see them. The people they meet do not interest them, and they themselves do not pay due attention to them. The rule that if interest is weak, then attention is weak, and if attention is weak, then memory is weak, is fully applicable here. A person who wants to develop this ability must begin by studying faces, taking an interest in them and treating them with attention. In this way, all observation will be focused on the appearance and appearance of people, and soon great success will be noticeable. It would be possible to offer such people the study of some elementary work on physiognomy, which will increase their interest in the study of faces, helping to improve memory in this direction.
To develop your powers of observation regarding faces (if you are interested in this, of course), you should study the face of every person you meet, noting general shape head and face, as well as nose, mouth, chin, forehead, and at the same time constantly thinking: “I will recognize you when I see you again.” Such a thought will stimulate the will to acquire a clear and distinct impression.
Acquiring an interest in this, as well as a careful study of the human face, will reward anyone for the time and effort spent, especially since with memory exercise you will gain the same knowledge of physiognomy, especially if you study the elementary manual on this subject.
There are few people who could quite clearly remember an absent friend, and their attempt to describe the appearance of the latter, as if they were a close acquaintance, is all the more amusing. Try to do this yourself, and you will be surprised how little you can actually remember, although you will soon recognize him when you meet him. Describe from memory, if you can, the eyes, nose, mouth of your best friend.
Look at the first person you meet and notice whether his forehead is high or low, narrow or wide; what are his eyebrows, straight or arched and what color; what kind of nose does he have - aquiline, Roman, Greek, snub; whether his mouth is small or large; whether his teeth are good or bad, whether they are large or small; whether he has a beard or mustache, long or short hair, etc. Do this when you see every face, note the details, as if you need to write a report about him and your career depends on a complete and correct report. A person’s face studied in this way is not forgotten. Several such exercises are very useful for developing the ability that everyone lacks. You will begin to distinguish facial features and, of course, perceive them because you are interested in it. Awakened interest will also give a clear impression, and the latter will lead to easier recall.
Then practice calling to mind the faces of people you have met, drawing them in your imagination. Once you have mastered the art of reproducing mental images of the faces you meet, it will be easy for you to recognize a person even after a significant period of time. Repeated revival of a mental image is equivalent to meeting with this person. You have probably noticed how easy it is to remember and draw a mental image of a photograph or portrait, and how difficult it is to bring to mind the same face as it really is. However, it's all a matter of habit, and after a few exercises it will be just as easy for you to remember a living face as its portrait.
I heard about one "quick sketch" artist; he divided into categories all kinds of shapes of the nose, eyes, mouth, chin, eyebrows, face shape, etc., and marked each such category with a specific number. He quickly examined the face of the person posing in front of him to understand the expression and general appearance, also quickly noting in his mind the rank of each feature: face shape - 4; eyes - 8; eyebrows - 2; nose - 3; mouth - 4; chin - 7, etc. By studying faces, you will involuntarily and quickly break them down into categories, which will help you become a good physiognomist and increase the interest and pleasure in the task. We have already indicated above some examples of amazing memory for faces.
In conclusion, we will say that the ability to notice and remember faces can develop like any other abilities and that the secret of this development lies in the following; be interested in faces, study them, attention will follow interest, and memory will follow attention.
Description:
Prosopagnosia (from ancient Greek πρόσωπον, prósōpon - face and ἀγνωσία, agnōsía - misrecognition) is a disorder of facial perception in which the ability to recognize faces is lost, but the ability to recognize objects is generally preserved. This condition is usually associated with brain damage in the right inferior occipital region, but new evidence has shown that there is also a congenital form of this disorder.
To help people suffering from prosopagnosia, successful therapies have been developed to help them learn to recognize people by features such as gait, hairstyle, voice, body type, manner of dressing, etc. Because usually the face is the most individual feature and the most important distinguishing factor memory, people with this condition may find it difficult to correctly relate information about people and live a normal social life.
Causes of prosopagnosia:
Bilateral damage to the lateral occipitotemporal gyrus and lingual gyrus interrupts the interaction of visual afferentation with complexes of afferentations of other modalities. As a result, recognition of faces (prosopagnosia) and objects (object agnosia) is impaired.
Symptoms of prosopagnosia:
Prosopagnosia is caused by trauma, either tumor growth, or, most often, vascular disorders in the right infero-occipital region, often with spread of the lesion to the adjacent parts of the temporal and parietal lobes. Other aspects of the recognition system in prosopagnosics usually remain intact. But this is not a defect of perception, since such patients easily determine whether two faces are the same or not. Moreover, they recognize a person if they look at him and hear his voice at the same time. Thus, prosopagnosia is a modality-specific disorder in which visual information does not interact with information from other modalities and therefore cannot be interpreted as a particular image stored in memory.
Characterized by impaired recognition of familiar faces. Recognizing parts of the face and distinguishing a face from other objects, patients cannot determine its individual identity, sometimes they are not able to distinguish between the faces of men and women, the features of their facial expressions. They also do not recognize the faces of close relatives (husband, wife, children, attending physician), and in severe cases they do not recognize their own face in the mirror. When recognizing people, patients use workarounds, for example, recognition by voice, gait, smell of perfume, etc. Recognition of animals and birds is also often impaired. In mild cases, recognition of faces is impaired only in photographs and films. There is reason to regard agnosia for faces as a manifestation of a more general defect - the inability to evaluate, by certain specific visual signs, the uniqueness of an object or its image, which allows one to recognize this particular object among objects of the same type, for example, to find one’s mug or comb among others. mugs or combs. On this basis, this form of agnosia is often referred to as agnosia of individualized features. Agnosia for faces can occur in the absence of object and other agnosias, but in some cases it is combined with other gnostic disorders, in particular simultaneous or color agnosia or unilateral optical-spatial agnosia and disturbances of the “body scheme”.
Man with various forms Prosopagnosia is usually no different from healthy person. One of the patient’s first complaints will be that it is difficult, sometimes impossible, for him to distinguish the faces of relatives and friends in new photographs. It becomes difficult for him to distinguish between heroes in films - they look alike to him.
According to Antonio Damasio, some patients with severe forms of prosopagnosia cannot distinguish not only faces, but in general any objects belonging to the same type of objects. For example, they perceive a face only as a face, a car as a car, and cannot determine whose face it is or what brand of car it is.
Another interesting aspect of the problem: prosopagnosia in old age affects mainly left-handers, the phenomenon of which has been quite well studied. It has been noticed that those who prefer writing with the left hand are more often born into late marriages than to young parents. This discovery was made quite recently and belongs to the psychologist from Canada S. Koren. From her point of view, the physiologically normal age for childbearing is 18-24 years. She made certain calculations, according to which 30-35-year-old parents of left-handed people have 25% more births, 35-39-year-olds - by 69%, and 40-year-old fathers and mothers have a very close chance of having a left-handed child. to 100%.
Another phenomenon of prosopagnosia is the worse memory of people with whom the patient comes into contact in Everyday life than distant relatives. This is most likely due to several factors:
in everyday life, people constantly change clothes - it is difficult for the patient to adapt and remember these little things;
The patient often communicates with distant relatives and distant friends by telephone - this helps to better remember the timbre of the voice and manner of speaking.
Ability to remember faces different people very different. For many, you need to see a person several times to recognize him by appearance. Some people too easily forget a well-known face, although they have not seen it for some 2-3 years. On the other hand, many recognize the faces of people they have met once, and once the impression they receive seems to remain forever, subject to frequent revivals. This ability is especially strongly developed among policemen, detectives, hoteliers and other people whose profession forces them to meet many people and in whose interests it is to remember and recognize those with whom they meet. This is a valuable gift, because the new acquaintance will be very friendly to you, since you quickly get to know him. Conversely, the inability to recognize people can be perceived as an insult and even make them dislike you.
The lack of development of this faculty shows that man has not made particularly energetic use of that part of his mind which notices the appearance and appearance of the people with whom he has encountered. Such a person can only look at others, but not see them. The faces he meets do not interest him, and he himself does not pay due attention to them. The rule that if interest is weak, then attention is weak, and if attention is weak, then memory is weak, fully applicable here. A person who wants to develop this ability must begin by studying faces, taking an interest in them and treating them with attention. In this way, all observation will be focused on the appearance and appearance of people, and soon great success will be noticed. Such people could be offered the study of some elementary work on physiognomy, which will increase their interest in the study of faces, helping to improve memory in this direction.
To develop your powers of observation about faces (if you really need it, of course), you should study the face of every person you meet, noting the general shape of his head and face, as well as his nose, mouth, chin, forehead, and at the same time constantly thinking: “ I will recognize you when I see you again." Such a thought will stimulate the will to acquire a clear and distinct impression.
Acquiring an interest in this, as well as a careful study of the human face, will reward anyone for the time and labor spent, especially since with memory exercise you will also gain knowledge of physiognomy, especially if you study the elementary manual on this subject.
There are few people who could quite clearly remember an absent friend, and their attempt to describe the appearance of a supposedly close acquaintance will be all the more amusing. Try to do this yourself - and you will see how little you can really remember, although you will recognize him when you meet him. Describe from memory, if you can, the eyes, nose, mouth of your best friend.
Look at the first person you meet and notice whether his forehead is high or low, narrow or wide; what are his eyebrows, straight or arched, and what color; what kind of nose does he have - aquiline, Roman, Greek, snub; whether his mouth is small or large; whether his teeth are good or bad, whether they are large or small; does he have a beard or mustache, is it long or short, etc. Do this when you see every face, take note of the details, as if you need to write a report about him and as if your career depends on the completeness and correctness of the report. A person’s face studied in this way is not forgotten. Several such exercises are very useful for developing the ability that everyone lacks. You will begin to distinguish facial features and, of course, perceive them because you are interested in it. Awakened interest will also give a clear impression, and the latter will lead to easier recall.
Then practice calling to mind the faces of people you have met, drawing them in your mind. Having mastered the art of reproducing a mental image of the persons you meet, you can easily recognize a person even after a significant period of time. Repeated revival of a mental image is equivalent to meeting with this person. You have probably noticed how easy it is to remember and draw a mental picture of a photograph or portrait, and how difficult it is to bring to mind the same face as it really is.
However, it's all a matter of habit, and after a few exercises it will be just as easy for you to remember a living face as its portrait. We heard about one artist who had the gift of physiognomy; he sketched faces extremely quickly. His secret was that he divided all kinds of noses, eyes, mouths, chins, eyebrows, face shapes, etc. into categories, and marked each such category with a specific number. He quickly examined the face of the person posing to understand his expression and general appearance, quickly noting in his mind the rank of each feature, such as: face shape - 1; eyes - 8; eyebrows - 2; nose - 3; mouth - 4; chin - 7, etc.
By studying faces, you will involuntarily and soon begin to divide them into categories, which will help you become a good physiognomist and increase interest and pleasure in the task being performed.
As a result, we will say that the ability to notice and remember faces can develop like any other abilities and that the secret of this development lies in the following: be interested in faces, study them, attention will follow interest, and memory will follow attention.
Imagine that you suddenly don’t recognize your family. You see them, but your brain is unable to process the information - you cannot determine whether they are smiling or how they are even feeling.
Imagine that you suddenly don’t recognize your mother, husband or wife, or your child. You see them, but your brain is unable to process the information - you cannot determine whether they are smiling or how they are even feeling.
This happened to David Bromley after a brain injury left him with "face blindness".
The medical term for David's disease is prosopagnosia. Patients see the eyes, nose, mouth - what is called "context" - but do not perceive it all as a whole. They do not recognize gestures and emotions.
“I can recognize my wife if I come home and know she’s here,” says David. “But if she passes me on the street when I’m not waiting for her, I won’t recognize her.”
David, a resident of Essex, lived with a congenital pathology of the visual system, without knowing it - as it turned out, his veins and arteries were confused. This subsequently led to partial loss of vision and brain damage, which became the cause of prosopagnosia.
Perhaps the most difficult feature of this condition is that people do not immediately notice that something is wrong with them.
Difficulty communicating
David remembers how he first became aware of the problem: “I was at a meeting of old friends whom I had not seen for 30 years. We were once very close, but then we went our separate ways.”
On the way back, he discussed the meeting with his brother-in-law: “Fran and Micky haven’t changed at all! Exactly the same as they were,” I shared my impressions, and suddenly thought. “Wait, they were wearing T-shirts?”
In fact, David did not see his friends, but his old memory of them: “My brain told me that they were here and they looked like this, but in reality they didn’t.”
After this, he learned that he suffered from facial blindness.
There are two main forms of prosopagnosia: congenital, where the brain fails to develop the ability to process facial features (an estimated 2% of the population suffers from this), and acquired, which occurs much less frequently due to brain damage.
Dr Ashok Jansari, a cognitive neuropsychologist at the University of East London, explains: “Acquired prosopagnosia is extremely rare because the brain must be affected in a specific area. small area. The back part of the right hemisphere should be affected, namely the right occipitotemporal region."
David reasons: “I don’t know what’s worse: not recognizing people all my life or - as it happened to me - suddenly losing this ability.”
He adds that the worst result is difficulty and confusion in communication. “We were on vacation in Cuba and went scuba diving. I was just talking with another tourist from Denmark when a woman swam up to us and said “buenos dias.” I replied: “Good afternoon, nice to meet you,” thinking that it was my wife Danish, when in reality it was my wife, whom I did not recognize."
David sees people perfectly, but after 10-15 minutes he can no longer recognize them. Now he explains to clients: "If I ignore you, it's not being rude. I just don't recognize you."
Fear of losing your job
London resident Sandra, who did not want to give her last name, is also afraid of communication problems. 14 years ago she suffered from encephalitis (inflammation of the brain), after which she developed prosopagnosia.
Although she has a moderately severe form - she recognizes those she knew before the disease - she tries to make sure no one finds out about it because she does not want to be considered disabled.
“Living with prosopagnosia is very embarrassing,” she says.
Sandra works as a teacher, and almost no one at work knows about her illness.
“If I see a child every day, I recognize him. But when one of the children greets me on the street, I know that this is a school student, but I don’t know who exactly. But I don’t say anything about this to the children, just every day I make an effort to remember their faces."
Sandra explains: "I guess I keep it a secret because I don't want anyone to think I can't do the job - I can't. I don't want to feel ashamed or have people think I'm some kind of... then inferior."
Dr. Jansari understands David and Sandra's feelings and fears. He knows of cases where people lost their jobs because of the disease - in particular, a teacher who did not always recognize the students, because this created problems when parents came to pick them up at the end of the day.
While prosopagnosia is not currently considered a disability, Dr. Jansari says it should be treated as such in some cases.
This condition is incurable. “If we are talking about acquired prosopagnosia, the affected area of the brain will not grow back, so the problem will not be solved,” says Jansari. “As for congenital prosopagnosia, we do not yet know what causes it. But theoretically, if it is ever established genetic cause of the disease, it will be possible to help him. However, this is still a very distant prospect.”
Although patients develop various strategies to cope with their difficulties, they are not always reliable, because people change their appearance.
Dr. Jansari smiles: “David saw a photograph of me one day and thought it was George Michael - but it was me, from the days when I wore a goatee and a gold ring in my ear!”
Events
Two percent of the world's population suffers from some form of facial memory loss.
When Jo Livingston, a former library employee, was in the park with her grandson, a woman sat down on a bench next to them. It was only when the woman began to speak that Jo realized that the speaker was her daughter. Joe suffers from Prosopagnosia – inability to distinguish faces.
Although she recognizes her children and grandchildren within own home, she tries to do this outside it as well.
Very little is known about prosopagnosia, but research suggests that about two percent of the population suffers from some form of the condition. “Currently, a wide range of prosopagnosia is known, starting from those people who have difficulty remembering faces, but when restoring information about this person, they remember him and end with those who doesn't even recognize himself in the photo", says Dr Brad Dushane, a lecturer in cognitive neuroscience at University College London. The doctor runs a research center that studies prosopagnosia.
"People with acquired prosopagnosia used to be able to recognize faces with ease, but this ability was impaired as a result of brain damage caused by head injury, stroke or degenerative diseases. However, in those people who developed the condition from early childhood, the brain never developed a facial recognition system ", adds the doctor.
As a child, Jo shared her problem with everyone, but as she moved into adulthood, she realized how behind she really was.
"If you can't recognize people, you feel like you're socially inept. You're always worried about what people around you might think of you, that you're either too rude and rude or keep to yourself. I remember once being interviewed for when applying for a job, a man in a dark suit spoke to me, then he left the room, and when he entered I continued the conversation from the moment we left off, but I never got the job because it was a completely different person in a dark suit."
Jo, now 65, has been married for about 40 years, but until recently, she did not tell her husband about her problems. “It’s shameful to admit that you don’t recognize your own husband. John always had a beard, but one summer he shaved it off, and I couldn’t look at photos of us together after that,” He seemed like a complete stranger to me."
Richard Russell, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, also studies prosopagnosia and its opposite—a person's exceptional ability to recognize faces in a crowd of people that they glimpsed several years ago. He says that although In half of cases of prosopagnosia development, genetics is to blame, the reasons for its appearance still remain unclear.
“There is an area in the human brain that is responsible for recognizing faces, and this area is thought to be significantly reduced in people with prosopagnosia, but this is not yet confirmed. There are also suggestions that this problem is related to the activity and volume of gray matter in the brain "
Jo first read about her condition 5 years ago and it became a turning point in her life. Now she goes to schools to explain to teachers how to identify signs of prosopagnosia in children with prerequisites for this, who might otherwise be diagnosed with autism. “I have never felt confident talking before, I stopped constantly asking others to forgive me for myself, instead I talk about myself, and people are very understanding.”
