FaceBlindness
脸盲症
Thank you for joining us for today's Spotlight program. I'm Liz Waid.
And I'm Joshua Leo. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting.It is easier for people to understand no matter where in the world they live.
How do you recognize other people — like your friends, your parents, or yourwife or husband? How do you recognize yourself? If you are like many people inthe world, you may not be able to explain it. You do not think about trying torecognize a person. You just look at their face and recognize them.
But this is not the case for Bill Choisser. Bill lives in the United States.He can see well. But he cannot recognize the faces he sees — not even his ownmother. He tells about one of his experiences.
"Once, around mid-day, I met my mother while walking down the street. Idid not recognize her. We walked towards each other. We passed within a meterof each other. The sidewalk was not busy. The only way I know this happened isthat she told me about it that night. She was not happy about this incident.And she has never forgiven me for it!"
Bill suffers from prosopagnosia, or face blindness. For someone who does notsuffer from face blindness, this condition can be hard to understand. In fact,until a few years ago, there were only a few reported cases. But face blindnessmay be more common than you think. Recent studies suggest that one in everyfifty people may have some form of face blindness. What is this condition? Whydoes it happen? Are you face blind? Today's Spotlight is on face blindness.
The brain is a complex and amazing organ. Scientists do not understandexactly how the brain sees, processes, and recognizes faces. But they do knowone thing. When a baby is born, he already has the ability to recognize faces.They say that babies know the difference between a male and a female face.Babies can usually recognize their mothers. And a baby likes to look at hismother's face more than any other face.
But this part of the brain does not work for a person who is face blind.Face blindness is a condition that prevents a person from recognizing faces.However, a person's ability to see is not affected.
Usually, when you look at a person's face, your brain works fast. Your braingives you information about that person. You can quickly see if he has light ordark skin, how old he is, his sex, and if he is sad or happy. A person with faceblindness can also see all these things. But for some reason, a face blindperson just cannot recognize the person.
Sometimes not recognizing people can lead to trouble. Cecelia Burmen livesin Stockholm, Sweden. Even as a child, Cecelia had problems recognizing faces.She would meet people. But when she saw them again, she would not recognizethem. She says that people thought she was rude or uncaring. She would not sayhello to people she had met before. She simply did not know who they were.
"People think I'm just snobby...It makes me really, really sad to losenew friends because they think I could not bother to say hello."
Gaylen Howard is another face blind person. She has trouble recognizing herown face!
"Sometimes in a crowded restroom, I see a mirror. In the mirror I cansee a group of people. But I do not know which one of them is me. So, I move myface to make it look strange. Then I know which one is me."
So, how does a person get face blindness? Well, there are two ways. Some peoplewith face blindness are born with the ability to recognize. But then, theysuffer some kind of brain damage. Over thirty years ago, Lincoln Holmes was ina car accident. The accident damaged his brain. He can still do everything justlike before — walk, talk, and work. But, since the accident, Lincoln can nolonger recognize faces. He cannot even recognize people he knew before theaccident happened. In the past, doctors thought that brain damage was the onlyway to get face blindness.
However, scientists now believe that the most common way people get faceblindness is from their parents — they inherit it! Recent studies suggest thatface blindness stays in families.
Thomas and Martina Gruter are doctors in Germany. They studied six hundredand eighty nine students. They found that seventeen of these students sufferedfrom some form of face blindness. And fourteen of these students also had afamily member with face blindness. The doctors now believe that a face blindperson has a fifty percent chance of passing face blindness on to theirchildren.
Face blind people usually develop their own methods to recognize faces.Cecelia cannot depend on her brain to recognize a person's face. But, she hastrained herself to look for other ways to recognize a person.
"When I try to recognize a person, this is what I look for. I look fortheir age and sex. I see these things as well as most people do. I look at aperson's general body shape, hair and face. I do see the details on a person'sface. I just have to use other brain centres to process the image I see. I lookfor the time and place that we meet. For example, when I am at work, I look forpeople I work with. I listen to the sound of a person's voice. Hearing thevoice of the person usually helps. I also look for what the person chose totalk about."
For many people, face blindness feels like a heavy load that they mustcarry. They feel alone. They know that they are not normal. But they often donot know why. A face blind person may just think that she is very forgetful.Cecelia grew up face blind. But she never knew the name of her condition.Discovering that she had a real medical condition made Cecelia feel like thisheavy load was lifted off her shoulders. She wants other people to feel thiskind of freedom too. So she continues to spread information about faceblindness in any way she can.
Doctor Richard Russell researches face blindness. He says that research forthis condition is just beginning. And the most important thing is to keeptelling more people about it.
"There are not any treatments for face blindness. Right now we are ...trying to understand what face blindness is. We are trying to tell more peopleabout it — doctors and the public."
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