Brad Pitt, the most famous victim. Is trouble remembering faces a common disease?

Some people suffer from face recognition problems because it takes time to recognize who is standing in front of them, or it may be difficult for them to recognize at first, this condition is called “face blindness” and world star Brad Pitt is the most famous for this condition.

Face blindness is a disorder in which you cannot recognize faces you have seen before, including friends and family.

In this regard, according to a new study from Harvard University, the disease may not be as rare as initially thought, according to a study published on the “Daily Mail” website.

Most estimates predict that about 2.5% of the world’s population suffers from this disorder known as “face blindness”.

The case has received a lot of attention from the media in recent years, after former Oscar winner Brad Pitt announced his experience with the case in June 2022, saying that “no one believed him.”

Revealing

Two eyes, nose and mouth

Nursery nurse Hannah Reid, who has the worst face blindness in the UK, said every face looked the same and had “eyes, a nose and a mouth”.

When Harvard University researchers administered various face recognition tests and questionnaires to 3,100 adults in the United States, they found a group of people who scored the worst.

The researchers found that the prevalence ranged from 0.13% to 5.42%, depending on the diagnostic thresholds used for face blindness.

People with this disorder can cope by using alternative ways to recognize people, such as remembering the way they walk, their hair style, voice or their clothes.

Facial Recognition – iStock

Brain Abnormalities

Face blindness is thought to result from abnormalities, damage, or weakness in the right fusiform gyrus—a fold in the brain that coordinates face vision and memory.

Prosopagnosia can also be caused by stroke, brain injury, or certain neurodegenerative diseases. But in some cases it is present at birth. This is most likely the result of a genetic mutation.

Additionally, researchers used different diagnostic criteria to evaluate some participants with face blindness. They determined that between 0.13 and 5.42% of the group suffered from prosopagnosia, depending on how severe these symptoms were. Interestingly, they also found that the more stringent criteria did not always identify individuals who were more impaired at recognizing faces.

Consequently, they had to soften the terms of diagnosis, dividing people into “mild” or “severe” conditions.

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