Human beings can configure our faces in thousands of ways to convey all kinds of emotions: anger, anger, sadness, joy or surprise are just a few feelings that can be read on our faces, and which are also universal to all human cultures. . For this reason, they say that the face is the mirror of the soul.
This could be the product, perhaps, of two of the characteristics that best define the human species: while other animals such as dogs acquire most of the information about their environment through their powerful sense of smell, or bats thanks to echolocation , for people the sense of sight is essential; we are eminently visual beings. On the other hand and par excellence, we are also some of the most social that inhabit the Earth, and those of us who have developed the most complex relationships that can exist between individuals of the same species.
Thus, it can be said that one of the keys to the evolutionary success of the human species lies in the ability to cooperate with each other, an aptitude partly governed by the ability to empathize with the emotions of our fellow men; to identify those people related to the tribe and to recognize in them their intentions, moods or predisposition to cooperate.
The face, the mirror of the soul
In short, people depend on our vision and ability to recognize information in the faces of others to develop a normal life, and precisely for this reason the so-called prosopagnosia o face blindness It is a disorder that can cause great discomfort in those who suffer from it, but what does it consist of?
Face blindness is a perplexing condition that can trick us into making us believing that we recognize people we have never met or, conversely, cause let’s not recognize those we do know. Although it may be little known, to date it has been estimated that the disorder affects between approximately 2% and 2.5% of the world population. Now, however, a new study published in the specialized magazine Cortex, states that this percentage could be around 3.1%, making this condition a more widespread phenomenon than expected.
What causes face blindness and how does prosopagnosia affect people?
According to the Harvard Medical School Professor of Psychiatry and director of the research, Joseph DeGutis prosopagnosia or facial blindness can be caused by a brain lesion in the occipital or temporal regions of the brain. This variant is known as acquired prosopagnosia and according to the author affects 1 in 30,000 people in the United States. Prosopagnosia can also be a congenital condition, either caused by genetic abnormalities or expressed throughout people’s lives. named developmental prosopagnosiait is estimated that this variant affects one in 33 people.
According to DeGutis, heHumans are remarkably effective at recognizing familiar faces, something that is done with very little effort. “We know that this ‘superpower’ is based on several specific perception processes, in which memory and various specialized brain regions are involved.” And it is precisely because of the everyday nature of this ability that face blindness can be a socially debilitating disorder. “For example, networking is extremely difficult for people with severe prosopagnosia. As social beings, recognizing someone is essential in various spheres of our lives, from intimacy, through the feeling of belonging, to identifying people with whom that we’re not interested in having relationships, something that can lead people with severe face blindness to social distress and embarrassment.”
Can traumatic memories be erased?
Prosopagnosia can also affect people in the Autistic spectrumin addition to manifesting itself as a consequence of age-related cognitive declineSo in a world where social isolation is on the rise, especially among adolescents and young adults, fostering and maintaining social ties and good face-to-face interactions is more important than ever.