Face Blind Sometimes

Self portrait by face blind artist Chuck Close.

There was this person that I used to see around. But more often, she saw me.

When we'd meet, she knew who I was, but I didn't recognize her, and I saw her take offense, like I didn't find her memorable or important. But really I just couldn't see her that well and needed some clueing in as to who she was.

Someone had told her that I had prosopagnosia, better known as face blindness, a neurological condition where people cannot differentiate people's faces. True that many people with low vision cannot distinguish faces, but this is not prosopagnosia. What I have begins in the eye as an optical distortion, whereas neurological face blindness is a function of the brain, not optics. Even close friends, family members and loved ones can be indistinguishable to people with prosopagnosia, but I do recognize those familiar to me and can tell them apart, including my friends who are identical twins. It's people who I don't know so well that I get confused, and that optical conundrum does indeed become a cerebral muddle.

Despite the difference in diagnosis, prosopagnosia and low vision also share some characteristics, particularly on the social level. People can hide from those of us who have either condition and often wonder who it is we're talking to. The face blind fellow in this Radiolab segment from their show on "Falling" likens his experience to having someone "disappear into the crowd":

Here's a more extensive conversation about prosopagnosia with neuroscientist Oliver Sachs and portrait artist Chuck Close. Close's artistic method of breaking up images into pixelated squares is not unlike how I put together faces when I look at them. I can also relate to what both men say about social strategies around not recognizing people:

Funny how at the end of this segment, Sachs and Close reveal that they share another characteristic: they both see through only one eye, though Sachs has lost his vision in that eye, and Close shuts one eye to prevent himself from seeing double. More about when and why I see through one eye in a future post.