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Post by faulconandsnowjob on Oct 8, 2009 1:36:42 GMT -5
From wiki: Prosopagnosia (sometimes known as face blindness) is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while the ability to recognize other objects may be relatively intact... The study of prosopagnosia has been crucial in the development of theories of face perception. Because prosopagnosia is not a unitary disorder (i.e., different people may show different types and levels of impairment) it has been argued that face perception involves a number of stages, each of which can be separately damaged.[5] This is reflected not just in the amount of impairment displayed but also in the qualitative differences in impairment that a person with prosopagnosia may present with. This sort of evidence has been crucial in supporting the theory that there may be a specific face perception system in the brain. This is counter-intuitive to many people as we do not experience faces as 'special' or perceived in a different way from the rest of the world... Until early in the 21st century, prosopagnosia was thought to be quite rare and solely associated with brain injury or neurological illness affecting specific areas of the brain. However, recently a form of congenital prosopagnosia has been identified, in which people are born with a selective impairment in recognising and perceiving faces. The cases that have been reported suggest that this form of the disorder may be highly variable and some newer research suggests that it may be heritable and much more common than previously thought (about 2.5% of the population may be affected).[1] It has been suggested that very mild cases of face blindness are much more common, perhaps affecting 10% of the population, although there have not been any studies confirming this.[2] The inability to keep track of the identity of characters in movies is a common complaint.[8]... Apperceptive prosopagnosia Apperceptive prosopagnosia is thought to be a disorder of some of the earliest processes in the face perception system. People with this disorder cannot make any sense of faces and are unable to make same-different judgements when they are presented with pictures of different faces. They may also be unable to work out attributes such as age or gender from a face... Unconscious face recognition One particularly interesting feature of prosopagnosia is that it suggests both a conscious and unconscious aspect to face recognition. Experiments have shown that when presented with a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar faces, people with prosopagnosia may be unable to successfully identify the people in the pictures, or even make a simple familiarity judgement ("this person seems familiar / unfamiliar"). However, when a measure of emotional response is taken (typically a measure of skin conductance), there tends to be an emotional response to familiar people even though no conscious recognition takes place[9] This suggests emotion plays a significant role in face recognition, perhaps unsurprising when basic survival (particularly security) relies on identifying the people around you. It is thought that Capgras delusion may be the reverse of prosopagnosia. In this condition people report conscious recognition of people from faces, but show no emotional response, perhaps leading to the delusional belief that their relative or spouse has been replaced by an impostor... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_blindness |
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Post by GetSmart on Oct 11, 2009 20:24:23 GMT -5
Falcon,
I cannot speak for the wider phenomena of Face Blindness. However, I can relay my own experience.
For years, I was unable to recognize people, confusing them with others who looked nothing like them. I also seemed to think that friendly people were good looking and nasty people were ugly, to everyone's disagreement. Was I looking at their inner self, not paying attention to their physique? Hmmm...
In recent times I have expended a great deal of energy detecting and comparing facial features, and have become fairly proficient at noticing what doesn't fit and who is reassembles who as well as why in particular. However, I still tend to fail to pay attention in everyday life, not really caring much about what people look like being more concerned with what they have to say or what they're up to.
This is only to say that in some instances, one can train oneself to distinguish facial features even if at first one is unable to do so. Of course if it due to medical reasons, this may not be possible. If for psychological reasons of disposition, with sufficient motivation it might be possible to remedy.
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Post by faulconandsnowjob on Oct 11, 2009 21:19:51 GMT -5
I think face blindness is interesting b/c some people really do not seem to be able to distinguish between faces that are similar, but not exactly the same. Paul McCartney is a good example, of course. Even though it's been proven that certain facial features don't match up, some people still can't see the difference. Is it b/c of prosopagnosia, or are they blinded by their beliefs?
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Post by GetSmart on Oct 14, 2009 11:00:39 GMT -5
...Even though it's been proven that certain facial features don't match up, some people still can't see the difference. Is it b/c of prosopagnosia, or are they blinded by their beliefs? Faulcon, I don't think that we can entirely dissociate prosopagnosia from the predispositions of our beliefs. Our imagination of what could be real limits what we see. This is something we all notice when we start to explore interesting internet forums. Depending upon our beliefs and our doubts (disbelief is a form of inverse belief) we will read a given thread on a certain subject. So we will acquire knowledge which fits into what we already think we know. We didn't read a thread which didn't fit anywhere. Somehow we didn't pick it out of the countless possibilities out there. Even if we chose to short circuit the self-fulfilling prophecy of our pre-established beliefs, by selecting only things which seem unattractive, futile and irrelevant, we would probably read it with a given slant, selecting only part of the information in a way in which our mind makes sense of it. So this is why some people cannot see what stares them in the face, cannot follow a thread of logic which denies their convictions, and fail to perceive facts which are at the center of our own reality. It is not a failure to communicate. It is the failure to recognize that communication is an illusion. That we mostly use that process to confirm the presence of what we set out to seek, and to reveal that which, intuitively or blindly, we already know. Of course, this doesn't account for those who pretend not to see what they see, finding it in their interest or that of their cause to lie about who they are and what they know. Disinformation is in fact a form of confirmation of our reality. They want to fool us so that we do not persevere. The ultimate mind control tactic would be to oppose and deny with extreme vehemence and aggressive tricks what you know to be false. What better way to mislead others from sharing your own sense of reality? Unfortunately for them, those doing all of this are probably themselves as much in the dark as everyone else, possibly more so given their abject role as conditioning shills. So I'd guess that prosopagnosia is a manifestation of a natural mental process that goes against usual social reflexes to the point that it becomes noticed and diagnosed by doctors. Others afflicted with varying degrees of this affliction will go on thinking they have life figured out, and the ones that see things eye to eye will know they're normal.  |
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Post by rainbeaubleu on Dec 27, 2011 11:55:00 GMT -5
From wiki: Unconscious face recognition One particularly interesting feature of prosopagnosia is that it suggests both a conscious and unconscious aspect to face recognition. Experiments have shown that when presented with a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar faces, people with prosopagnosia may be unable to successfully identify the people in the pictures, or even make a simple familiarity judgement ("this person seems familiar / unfamiliar"). However, when a measure of emotional response is taken (typically a measure of skin conductance), there tends to be an emotional response to familiar people even though no conscious recognition takes place[/b][9] This suggests emotion plays a significant role in face recognition[/color], perhaps unsurprising when basic survival (particularly security) relies on identifying the people around you.[/size] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_blindness[/quote] I have prosopagnosia since experiencing a complete shift of reality following a brain injury. I noticed this phenomenon ("presentiment") occurring and used it to navigate my world when my usual bedrock of intellectual adeptness left me. Dean Radin's work is interesting to consider along side this phenomenon. I noticed the 'emotional rush' while 'locating' grocery items too. It would take another 3 minutes to visually decipher it's location, but I knew when I was in front of it by the feeling just like Radin's test subjects in the Las Vegas experiment. [/color]This evidence comes from various experiments designed to explore the possible physiological signatures of a precognition-related experience that has come to be known as presentiment or pre-stimulus response. The first presentiment studies were conducted by Dr. Dean Radin (1997, 2004) of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California. He had his subjects view both affective and neutral pictures being randomly displayed on a computer screen while the electrical activity in the nerve cells of the subjects’ skin was being measured. Affective pictures contain images that draw out a particularly strong emotional reaction in us, whether it is fear or shock (e.g., fatal accidents, murder victims, & threatening animals), or arousal (e.g., erotic images). Neutral pictures are just the opposite - images that tend not to stir our emotions (e.g., landscapes, household items, & fruit). The results of Radin’s studies indicated that the subjects had shown significantly larger changes in skin electrical activity in the moments just before they were shown an affective picture as compared to changes in their activity just before seeing a neutral picture. This suggests that the nervous systems of the subjects were producing an emotional "jump" response to the affective picture before they had even seen it. In other words, it seems to be an emotional response in anticipation of a future event.[/color] Follow-up studies suggested that violently-themed affective pictures tend to elicit the strongest presentiment response, and that the response can be stronger when the affective picture is shown for a shorter time (Bierman & Radin, 1997, 1999). A few other independent studies have tried other startling stimuli, such as blasting alarm sounds into the subjects’ ears at random times. These subjects also showed a presentiment response (May et al., 2005; Spottiswoode & May, 2003). A growing number of recent studies are suggesting that other parts of the body may also show a presentiment response, including the heart (McCraty et al., 2004a) and the brain (Bierman & Scholte, 2002; Bierman & van Ditzhuijzen, 2006; Hinterberger et al., 2006; McCraty et al., 2004b). The results of a study by Radin and Eva Lobach (2007) of the University of Amsterdam, which was published in the latest issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, seems to add to the evidence for the latter.[/size] publicparapsychology.blogspot.com/2007/11/brain-response-to-future-event.html[/quote]After many years of studying facial features and face reading, I've become more skilful than the majority of people at recognizing faces quickly. Every line, all 144 muscles and every single feature has a meaning. I see them as pieces instead of seeing the whole and can feel my brain clicking through it's checklist as I look at people whose identity I have questions about at first glance. I think that anyone can learn to see faces in a new light if they choose to be willing to see more. Although my original goal was to regain normal facial recognition (which hasn't happened), I find that I learned to navigate life more consciously without it. It's become an advantage to see from a different vantage. (Add Vantage) I agree that our belief systems have an enormous influence on what we see and what we're willing to look at! I think some of us are looking at different layers of perception or reality than others. Shiny things (surface appearances) do not impress me. |
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Post by artemis on May 23, 2013 16:10:21 GMT -5
"Why Can’t Brad Pitt Recognize You Anymore?
Brad Pitt's memory is shot … at least, when it comes to remembering faces.
The 49-year-old actor says he has developed facial blindness, where after meeting and engaging with someone, that person's face disappears from his memory as soon as they walk away. If they ever come in contact again, to him, it's like meeting an entirely new person.
"So many people hate me because they think I'm disrespecting them," the "World War Z" star told Esquire. "So I swear to God, I took one year where I just said, This year, I'm just going to cop to it and say to people, 'Okay, where did we meet?' But it just got worse. People were more offended."
The globe-trotting star, who has six children with Angelina Jolie, says the disorder has caused people to think he's, well, a jerk.
"Every now and then, someone will give me context, and I'll say, 'Thank you for helping me.' But I piss more people off," he says. "You get this thing, like, 'You're being egotistical. You're being conceited.' But it's a mystery to me, man. I can't grasp a face and yet I come from such a design/aesthetic point of view. I'm going to get it tested."
Despite not undergoing any testing, Pitt goes on to say he diagnosed himself with the medical condition prosopagnosia, which is the official name for facial blindness, after reading about it several years ago.
It's gotten to the point where he doesn't enjoy going out in public, which is "why I stay at home," he tells the magazine, adding that in his job, "You meet so many damned people. And then you meet 'em again."
So it sounds like the fine folks who met Pitt Wednesday night at a screening for "World War Z" in Hoboken, New Jersey, are already a distant memory to the star. He made a surprise appearance to introduce his film — and the audience went absolutely nuts, as you can see in this clip.
After thanking the fans for coming out and apologizing for the screening getting off to a late start, the ponytail clad star said, "Today we came out to show the film for the people we made it for — our fans! We said, well there's no other place better than Jersey!"
"World War Z" hits theaters on June 21. You can read more of Pitt's interview in the June/July cover story of Esquire."
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