prosopagnosia

It’s not that the person who can never remember meeting you is snobby or even absent-minded; they may have a fascinating – and often difficult – neurological condition called prosopagnosia, known more commonly as face blindness.

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After a lifetime of thinking that she was just a little bit bad at remembering people, Sadie Dingfelder learned that she had prosopagnosia, a disorder more colloquially known as face blindness. Harvard psychologist Joe DeGutis, PhD, who runs the research study that Dingfelder participated in, joins her to discuss how people with face blindness see the world, why it’s such an interesting disorder to study, and promising treatments that his lab is exploring. 

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Links

Joe DeGutis, PhD
Boston Attention and Learning Lab

Music

"Mystery" by ispeakwaves courtesy of freesound.org

Sponsor

APA 2020 Virtual

What's it like to live with prosopagnosia or face blindness? Join Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick as they devote an entire Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode to listener thoughts, observations and experiences. 

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It’s easy to take the human brain’s facial recognition powers for granted, unless there’s a malfunction. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick explore the science of prosopagnosia or face blindness. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.