Anyone can experience this: failing to recognize someone after having already met them. Brad Pitt asserts that prosopagnosia, often known as facial blindness, is the cause of his inability to recall things.
The 58-year-old claimed to GQ for the magazine's August cover story that "nobody believes me!" I want to meet someone else.
Although he had not yet received a formal diagnosis, he had concerns about the illness as early as 2013, telling Esquire that he believed people believed he was being "egotistical" and "conceited" since he couldn't recall them.
But, wow, it's a mystery to me. I come from such a design/aesthetic point of view, but I can't understand a face," he remarked.
Pitt has stated that he will get a test for this illness. Here is a peek at the condition.
What is prosopagnosia?
A neurological condition called prosopagnosia impairs facial perception, or the capacity to identify well-known faces.
There are two types: developing and acquired.
Acquired prosopagnosia follows brain damage such as a stroke or other head injury, according to the National Health Service in the UK.
Prosopagnosia during development can happen without any brain injury. According to the NHS, it "may have a hereditary component and run in families."
What causes it?
The fusiform gyrus region of the brain is assumed to be the source of facial blindness, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. According to ScienceDirect, the area "plays essential roles in object and face identification."
Despite the fact that it may be more frequent in people with autism than in the general population, it is not brought on by memory loss, eyesight, or a learning problem.
How common is it?
Studies have shown that 1 in 50 people have some form of prosopagnosia, with developmental being the most common.
How is it diagnosed?
Brad Pitt hasn't been put through any official tests. When he does, though, it will probably include assessing his capacity for facial recognition, which involves being given a group of faces and then being asked to recall them, as well as being asked to determine a person's age, gender, or emotional expression.
Symptoms
The symptoms vary based on the type of prosopagnosia a person has and how severe it is.
- Inability to recognize or differentiate between faces of people they don’t know well consistently
- Struggling to identify a person in a different setting
- Inability to recognize the faces of loved ones (severe)
- Inability to recognize your own face (severe)
What is the treatment for prosopagnosia?
Those who have developed prosopagnosia can be retrained to identify faces using alternative cues even though there is no known treatment for this illness.
According to NINDS, those who have developed prosopagnosia can employ compensatory techniques to detect faces more easily.
Coping with prosopagnosia
Prosopagnosia is said to be socially crippling because people with the disorder avoid social situations and “feelings of depression are common,” according to the NHS.
Pitt said he uses it as an excuse to “stay at home.”
He told Esquire, "You meet so many awful people. Then you run into them again.
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