Imagine how awful it would be to not be able to recognize your own mother's face. The short video clip about prosopagnosia we watched in lecture on Monday stuck with me most of that day. I started thinking about just how difficult it would be to be incapable of committing anyone's face to memory. When I look back to my first week of college last fall, I think I received a taste of what that must be like.
There were so many strangers all at once and so many new faces. My poor brain was so overwhelmed it kept changing unfamiliar faces into the faces of friends from home. I would meet someone at lunch, see them the next day and not have any memory of meeting them. After that week, I felt like I could slightly relate to Barry Wainwright when he said "the world is a sea of unfamiliar faces" in his 2008 Guardian article.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/22/exp-erience-prosopagnosia-face-blindness-neurology#send-share).
In his article, Wainwright describes how difficult it is to go through life not being able to recognize his wife and children's faces. Instead, he has learned to remember their clothing and walking styles. His wife has a bright red "supermarket jacket" so he can find her if they get separated.
Barry Wainwright's case is more extreme than many other examples. The fact that he is even incapable of recognizing his own face is hard for me to grasp. Your own face - something you see multiple times a day, every day, every year of your life - seems like something that would be impossible to forget. Even after doing some minor research online about how this disorder works, I suppose I still don't entirely understand it.
This would be so awful! In the video we watched in lecture the part that made me the most sad was when the lady didn't even recognize her own face. I can't imagine not recognizing my own face! Have you read about any medication or treatments that help reduce or reverse this condition?