Eyes without a face

Eyes without a face

It’s interesting how words can make you think of certain songs. Michael O’Reilly’s post made me think of Eyes without a face from Billy Idol.

Billy Idol – Eyes Without A Face

Michael mentioned that he can recognize people by their voices; noting accent, cadence, word choice, etc.

Thanks again for sharing Michael O’Reilly 

#fMRIblob #ScienceSunday  

Originally shared by ScienceSunday

Prosopagnosia Awareness

Prosopagnosia (Greek: “prosopon” = “face”, “agnosia” = “not knowing”) is a a condition commonly called Face Blindness. From the Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia

Michael O’Reilly shares a personal side of prosopagnosia here.

http://goo.gl/X6zM9

He also shared this piece of news for #ScienceSunday . For our friends in the UK, consider checking out the petition.

Prosopagnosia In The News

http://goo.gl/qSGLm

Prosopagnosia, or Face Blindness, is a largely unrecognized disorder. (Yes, yes, I know…) Various estimates hold that between 2% and 10% of the population exhibit some degree of this inability to recognize familiar faces, yet few people have even heard of it, and as a result many sufferers are hesitant to even mention they have difficulty for fear of embarrassment or discrimination. 

Dr. Sarah Bate of the Centre for Face Processing Disorders at Bournemouth University is leading a campaign to raise greater awareness of Prosopagnosia in the U.K. House of Commons. She has an online petition available through www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org which I highly encourage U.K. readers to go sign. The attached article has further information.

For U.S. readers who wish to know more about prosopagnosia, the Prosopagnosia Research Centers at Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and University College London have excellent information at www.faceblind.org including their biannual Face to Face newsletter.

As a prosopagnosic myself, I am always interested in the current state of research and I hope to enlighten others about this condition. So many people don’t even know this disorder exists, even those suffering from it in many cases. Greater awareness can help out both by increasing research and reducing any perceived stigma in admitting to having prosopagnosia.

The first figure below is from:

The anatomic basis of the right face-selective N170 IN acquired prosopagnosia: A combined ERP/fMRI study

K. A. Dalrymple et al

Neuropsychologia. 2011 Jul;49(9):2553-63. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.05.003.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21601585

fMRI and ERP were used to gain insight into a region of the brain associated with the acquired form of prosopagnosia. Event-related potentials (ERP) are measured with electroencephalography (EEG). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event-related_potential

ScienceSunday co-curator Chad Haney has posted about fMRI frequently, and most recently here: http://goo.gl/xhc6T

An interesting point of the first figure is that the location of the lesion isn’t necessarily where the investigators are looking in terms of the functional image and as mention by Chad before, the figure demonstrates the variability in BOLD MRI (fMRI).

The remaining three figures are from

Congenital prosopagnosia: multistage anatomical and functional deficits in face processing circuitry.

V Dinkelacker et al

J Neurol. 2011 May;258(5):770-82. doi: 10.1007/s00415-010-5828-5. Epub 2010 Dec 1.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21120515

The interesting finding there is that facial recognition is not as impaired when it comes to negative faces. The images also show that unlike the first study linked here, the congenital prosopagnosia patients lack any lesion. They hypothesize that congenital prosopagnosia is due to a network dysfunction and that the lingual gyrus plays a substantial role. The lingual gyrus has to do with visual processing, especially letters. The name is due to its physical apperance as it looks like a tongue. It is not associated with speech.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingual_gyrus

So thanks Michael O’Reilly for sharing your story and making us aware of prosopagnosia.

#ScienceSunday #SciSunCH