I chose to write this note about prosopagnosia because this disorder is not well-known although it deeply impairs social life of a lot of people. I also decided to present this disorder because when I made my internship in hospital last year, I met a patient who was suffering from this disease.
Prosopagnosia is also called face blindness, that is why when someone is affected by prosopagnosia, he is unable to recognize faces, even the individuals who were very close to him. He cannot recognize his friends anymore, neither his parents or his children. When someone suffers from prosopagnosia, he is unable to identify familiar individuals or famous people on photographs. Furthermore, for certain people who suffered from advanced prosopagnosia, the ability to recognize themselves in the mirror might be degraded. Socials interactions become very complicated and painful, and as a result the patient is often isolated due to his impairment. Prosopagnosia is not defined as a memory disorder, « it’s a selective impairment of visual learning and recognition of faces » (Kennerknecht, et al., 2006). It is a selective impairment because the rest of the cognitive functioning is untainted, only the ability to explore, encode, store, and retrieve or recognize a face is altered, hence social interactions become painful and people who suffer from this disorder try to avoid social interactions. A study (Diaz, 2008) shows that the problem is not about the creation of a relationship, it is about to keep it. This study takes the case of a young boy affected by Prosopagnosia, it relates his difficulties to maintain a relationship with someone met before, because he can’t recognize him anymore. Prosopagnosia disease is often due to brain wounds, or to development problems but it could also have a congenital origin. So, we can divide prosopagnosia in two groups, acquired form and innated or congenital form.
Last year, I realized my internship in the service of Neurology at Saint-Nazaire, thus I met the patient mentioned earlier, who was an old man retired that needed a cognitive and clinical evaluation in order to better understand his difficulties. He had a vascular accident 20 years ago that induced prosopagnosia. Despite his impairment, he had a great career, he could work without being hindered by his disease. Once retired, he began to meet new people, and he described a great apprehension to fail to recognize people he met. During the neuropsychological statement, he was very anxious, he did not want to go out anymore, afraid of being unable to recognize someone he know. A specific impairment of the ability to analyse and recognize faces emerges from the assessment of the cognitive functioning shows. His memory, his attentional resources, his executive functioning were quite normal. This evaluation corroborates the diagnosis of Prosopagnosia, it is the reason why we talked about how he could cope with his disorder in his everyday life. Investigations highlight that patients affected by Prosopagnosia often develop strategies to deal with the deficit of face’s recognition. A study (Diaz, 2008), describes those strategies. Thanks to contextual and visual cues, people affected by Prosopagnosia are able to identify someone. By example, when you are at school or at work, you know you will meet specifics individuals like your teacher or your co-workers. Individuals we meet along the day belong to a specific context like work, school, or home. So, the time and the place they meet people become cues. Visual cues refer to glasses, hat, beard, hair earrings, tattoo, or specifics clothes. Individuals with distinctive features are easier to recognize. I explain him how he could identify and use this specifics cues in his everyday life. We also talked about making a little note that explains his disorder to people that he didn’t recognize.
Finally, prosopagnosia is a disease which is far to impair anybody, people affected by this disease are often misunderstood, and I believe this disease deserves to be better known by everyone in order to reduce the pain caused.
If this note truly interested you, you can watch this video in order to fulfil your knowledge about prosopagnosia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhzGQ3M0DHQ
Words I have learnt: internship = stage; untainted = préservé; hence = c’est pourquoi; neuropsychological statement = bilan neuropsychologique; to cope with/to deal with = gérer.
References
Diaz, A., L. (2008). Do I know you? A case study about prosopagnosia. The journal of school nursing, 24(5), 284-289. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/1059840508322381.
Kennerknecht, I., Grueter, T., Welling, B., Wentzek, S., Horst, J., Edwards, S., & Grueter, M. (2006). First report of prevalence of non-syndromic hereditary prosopagnosia (HPA). American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A, 140A(15), 1617–1622. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1002/ajmg.a.31343