summary: Prosopagnosia, or facial blindness, is thought to affect up to 2.5% of the population. But researchers say prosopagnosia can be on the spectrum, and the number of cases can be much higher, with up to 1 in 33 people meeting her criteria for facial blindness. I’m assuming there may be.
sauce: harvard
Facial blindness, a mysterious condition that makes you believe you recognize people you’ve never met and makes you unable to recognize people you know, has historically affected 2-2.5% of the world’s population. It was estimated that
Now, a new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the VA Boston Health Care System offers new insights into this disorder, and that it may be more common than currently thought. suggests.
Published February 2023 cortex, study results show that 1 in 33 people (3.08%) may meet the criteria for facial blindness or prosopagnosia. That’s the equivalent of more than 10 million Americans, the researchers said.
This study found similar face matching performance among people diagnosed with prosopagnosia using strict and loose criteria, suggesting that diagnostic criteria need to be expanded more comprehensively. I was. This could lead to new diagnoses among the millions who may have the disorder but are unaware of it.
In a new study led by Joseph DeGutis, HMS Associate Professor of Psychiatry at VA Boston, researchers found that facial blindness is on a spectrum rather than representing a separate group. The authors also provide diagnostic suggestions for identifying minor and major forms of prosopagnosia, based on guidelines for major and minor neurocognitive disorders. DSM55th Edition Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
The findings are based on a web-based survey and test of 3,341 people. First, researchers asked participants if they had difficulty recognizing faces in their daily lives. We then conducted two objective tests to determine whether it was difficult to remember new faces or to recognize very familiar and well-known faces.
The results showed that 31 of 3,341 had severe prosopagnosia and 72 of 3,341 had mild. The researchers also observed that there were no distinctly divided, discrete groups of people with low or high ability to recognize faces. Rather, their ability to recognize faces appeared to be on a continuum, they said.
Finally, the researchers compared the face-matching scores of people with prosopagnosia diagnosed using different criteria, corresponding to lower face-matching scores even using more stringent diagnostic cutoffs. I discovered that it doesn’t.
harvard medical news We spoke with DeGutis, senior author of the study, about the implications of the findings.
Harvard Medical News: Let’s start with the basics. What causes facial blindness?
Degutis: Prosopagnosia, or facial blindness, can be caused by a brain injury in the occipital or temporal region called acquired prosopagnosia, which affects 1 in 30,000 people in the United States. Prosopagnosia can also be a lifelong condition caused by genetic or developmental abnormalities, called developmental prosopagnosia, which affects 1 in 33 people.
HMNews: While this is a fascinating condition, some may say it is not a serious health problem, so why is it important to study and understand it?
Degutis: First, facial blindness can be a socially debilitating disability that can limit employment opportunities. For example, networking can be very difficult for people with prosopagnosia and cause social distress and embarrassment. That’s what it means.
Prosopagnosia may also affect individuals on the autism spectrum and may also be a result of age-related cognitive decline. It is more important than ever to develop and maintain social bonds and enhance face-to-face interactions among teens and young adults.
HM News: What sparked your interest in this field? What intrigues you most about how the brain remembers faces, and why?
Degutis: Facial blindness is attractive on several levels. Humans are very good at recognizing familiar faces, and we can do this with little effort. We know that this facial “superpower” relies on a few specific perceptual processes. A memory process that easily associates knowledge about faces with people. Also, specialized brain mechanisms and regions, such as the fusiform facial region.
Our knowledge of facial recognition in non-impaired individuals provides a very robust framework for understanding how these processes are disrupted in prosopagnosia. It also provides clues as to how to improve facial recognition in people with facial blindness, one of the lab’s main goals. Finally, the study of prosopagnosia is also interesting from a phenomenological point of view. What do people with facial blindness “see” when they actually see a face? What do they think of when they think of a familiar friend’s face?
HM News: Your findings call for expanding diagnostic criteria. Why is it important?
Degutis: This is important on several levels. First, the majority of researchers use overly stringent diagnostic criteria, and many people with significant facial recognition problems in their daily lives are mistakenly assumed not to have prosopagnosia. It has been said. Knowing that there is real, objective evidence of prosopagnosia, even in its mildest form, can lead to consequent negative effects on daily life, such as telling colleagues or seeking treatment. Expanding the diagnosis is important because it helps us take steps to mitigate .
Recent evidence suggests that people with mild facial blindness may benefit more from certain treatments than those with more severe facial blindness. cognitive training, or training directly aimed at improving face association.
Finally, factors such as age-related cognitive decline and social anxiety can further reduce facial recognition ability. Knowing whether you have mild prosopagnosia may help you keep an eye out for further situational or age-related declines in your ability to recognize faces.
HM News: What do you want clinicians and patients to feel from these results?
Degutis: The key message is that phase recognition is on a continuum, and the strict and loose diagnostic criteria employed in phase recognition research over the past 13 years have identified mechanistically highly similar populations. , provides justification for expanding the criteria to include patients with milder forms.
Another important message is the importance of using a combination of self-reported daily life difficulties and validated objective measures when diagnosing prosopagnosia. Relying solely on self-reporting has advantages and disadvantages. This is because it can be difficult to judge one’s own abilities, or to rely solely on objective laboratory measurements that may not reflect everyday life.
Authorship, Funding and Disclosure
Additional authors include Kanisha Bahierathan, Katherine Barahona, EunMyoung Lee, Travis Evans, Hye Min Shin, and Jirapat Likitlersuang from Harvard Medical School and the VA Boston Healthcare System. Marti Mishra of the University of Richmond. and Jeremy Wilmer of Wellesley College.
See also
Funding: This work was supported by a National Eye Institute grant awarded to Joseph DeGutis (R01EY026057).
The authors have no disclosures to report.
About this visual neuroscience and facial blindness research news
author: Ekaterina Pesheva
sauce: harvard
contact: Ekaterina Pesheva – Harvard University
image: image is public domain
Original research: open access.
“What is the prevalence of developmental prosopagnosia? An empirical evaluation of different diagnostic cutoffs.by Joseph DeGutis et al. cortex
overview
What is the prevalence of developmental prosopagnosia? An empirical evaluation of different diagnostic cutoffs.
The prevalence of developmental prosopagnosia (DP), a lifelong facial recognition disorder, is widely reported to be 2-2.5%. However, DP was diagnosed in a variety of ways across studies, resulting in varying prevalence.
In the current study, we applied well-validated objective and subjective facial recognition measures to an unselected web-based sample of 3,116 individuals aged 18–55 years and applied DP diagnostic cutoffs over the past 13 years. We estimated the range of DP prevalence by
Estimates of prevalence using the z-score approach range from 0.64% to 5.42%, and using the percentile approach range from 0.13% to 2.95%, with a cutoff most commonly used by researchers of 0.93% (z- score, .45% when using percentiles).
We then used multiple cluster analysis to see if there were natural groups with poor facial recognition abilities, but we found that there were more than one groups with above-average and below-average facial recognition in general. and could not find a consistent group.
Finally, we investigated whether DP studies using more relaxed diagnostic cutoffs were associated with improved performance on the Cambridge Face Perception Test.
A sample of 43 studies showed increased diagnostic rigor and reduction DP face recognition accuracy (Kendall’s tau-b correlation, τb = .176 z-score; τb = .111 percentile).
Taken together, these results suggest that investigators used a more conservative DP diagnostic cutoff than the widely reported prevalence of 2–2.5%. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using more comprehensive cutoffs, such as identifying mild and major forms of DP based on DSM-5.
