Wired Magazine has an article on a curious condition known as prosopagnosia where affected individuals cannot recognise people by their faces, despite being able to recognise and distinguish everyday objects with little trouble.
Until recently, it was thought that the condition only arose after brain injury – usually because of damage to an area of the brain known as the fusiform gyrus. This area is known to be heavily involved in face recognition.
It has more recently been reported as an inherited form, suggesting that some people are simply born with particularly bad face recognition skills.
The article looks at the work of neuropsychologist Dr Bradley Duchaine who is investigating the psychology and neuroscience of face recognition impairment, and discusses the experience of several people who have the condition.
One of the people is Bill Choisser, who created ‘Face Blind!‘, one of the first and longest-running prosopagnosia websites on the net.
A particularly striking feature of his site is a self-published book which is an in-depth discussion of the condition and its effects.