Prosopagnosia, visual agnosia

Prosopagnosia is a type of visual agnosia , which consists of failure to recognize the faces of famous people, even friends and family. The affected sees and recognizes the different parts of the face, but you cannot remember its location or identify who it is.
The prosopagnosia is really a kind of Disconnect between the view and the brain. Eyes are working properly and are able to see the different parts that make up a face - mouth, nose, eyes, hair - and which are the characteristics that allow us to remember it, but the brain seems unable to interpret information received through the sense of sight, and prevents the subject to recognize other people.
Perhaps that is why, to this disorder is known as faceblindness or 'face blindness'. People who are born with this problem often develop techniques adaptive to recognise other individuals by their voice, the clothes they wear, or his gestures, and sometimes do not realize that suffer from prosopagnosia until they become adults.

Prosopagnosia: main features

Prosopagnosia, for which at present there is treatment, is distinguished by the following characteristics:

• This disorder can be congenital - are born with-, or acquired as a result of a head injury, a stroke, or a neurodegenerative disease.
• In more severe cases, the patient can not recognize even her own face, and is frequent that this condition is associated with other neurological problems.
• But its main feature is the inability to recognize familiar faces, patients may identify to family members or friends if they have any distinctive feature - a mole, a tic, beard, striking glasses - which facilitates them the task.
• The affected Yes remember the characteristics of their relatives and loved ones, as the voice, odor, hair, or skin tone, can not remember what the face nor the location of different parts of the face (nose, eyes, mouth...).
• Prosopagnosia It has been considered an extremely rare disease, because many patients were unaware that they were, or not attending the specialist to consult your problem. Currently it is estimated that it affects 2.5% of the population.

Article contributed for educational purposes