The Faceblind View: Pan's Labyrinth review

The Faceblind View: Pan's Labyrinth review

From Andrea's movie reviews for Prosopagnosics blog. Will you be able to tell the characters apart?

Prosopagnosia Key Words and Abbreviations

This list is really helpful if you start reading more about Prosopagnosia. PA's tend to use a lot of abbreviations:) It is from www.Prosopagnosia.com (a few minor edits have been made).

List of words related to face-blindness.

AC - Autistics and cousins (sometimes seen, but seldom, on the face blind lists) (Bill)

AS - Abbreviation for "Asperger's syndrome". (Bill)

ASD - Autistic Spectrum Disorder. The acronym ASD is used on many lists that discuss
Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Aspergers Syndrome, Tourettes Syndrome, and (sometimes) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. (Julianne Douglass`)

Aspergers syndrome - A condition where a person has a collection of neurological deficits, considered by some to be a less severe case of autism. Quite a few Aspergers are face blind, though not all face blind people have Aspergers. (Bill)

Autistic Spectrum - An umbrella term used to cover all of the conditions (autism, Asperger, Tourette, etc.) which are considered to be related with each other based upon their underlying criteria and severity with which they seem to affect the people who have have the condition. (Glenn)

CAPD - Abbreviation for "central auditory processing disorder". (Bill)

Central auditory processing disorder - a sound processing deficit in which sounds are scrambled in the brain. Quite a few face blind people have CAPD, though CAPD is quite common and most people with it are not face blind. (Bill)

Essences - a term covering demeanor, body language, and emotions, when these things are used as a face blind person's primary way of telling people apart. (Bill)

FB - face-blind (Cecilia)

fb-folks - The private mailing-list that is strictly for people with PA. More info can be found at
http://home.earthlink.net/~blankface/folks.shtml

fb-public - The public message board about PA found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/faceblind. (Cecilia)

FFA - Fusiform face area - the part of the brain some researchers believe recognizes faces (Bill)

fMRI - Abbreviation for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a technique that shows what part of the brain is being used at a given instant (Bill)

Gorbachev effect - the situation that face blind people can all recognize someone with a striking physical difference. These are usually ugly differences because people strikingly beautiful tend to look quite average (origin: the statement that "all face blind people can recognize Gorbachev") (Bill)

Key traits - (or just "traits") - characteristics of others that a face blind person concentrates on in building his filing system for telling people apart (Bill)

NT - short for NeuroTypical, i.e., any person who has a "normal functioning" brain. Despite how this sounds, it is not considered a derogatory comment. John Smith would be a typical NT. (Glenn and Cecilia)

PA - prosopagnosia (Cecilia)

Place blind - common name for "topographic (or topographical) agnosia" (Bill)

Topographic agnosia - the inability to visualize and process places. This causes one to have difficulty with getting lost. Quite a few face blind people have topographic agnosia, though not all persons with either condition have the other. (Bill)

Good Map Feature

Not only does downtown Houston, have street maps posted around the city core on lamp posts, it has also done a great job making the maps easily readable for Topographical (or navigational) Agnosics.

Each map is oriented to the specific spot where it is posted, so that UP on the map is always STRAIGHT AHEAD. If only all maps where posted like this.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Emotion robots learn from people

BBC NEWS | Technology | Emotion robots learn from people


Someday, robots will be able to recognize faces better than I can, which I guess, wouldn't be hard. This article is about teaching robots to recognize emotion in the face of humans. The ability to do this varies among Prosopagnosics. Some are good at recognizing emotions, while others are not.

According to the results I just received from my battery of tests taken at the Cognitive Neuroscience Dept. at the College of London, while I scored low on the ability to recognize faces, I still scored well on the ability to read emotions of faces before me. It is amazing how specialized some of our perceptive abilities are.

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience

I had the hardest time finding the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, part of the College of London, where I went to be tested. I have never been able to find my way around indoors or out, and get lost trying to find my way back from bathrooms in restaurants. I found out from Dr. Duchaine that this problem is often seen in Prosopagnosics. It's called Topographical Agnosia. so that's my problem! Or one of them at least.

Cognitive Bias, Patterns & Pseudoscience « Andrea’s Buzzing About:

Cognitive Bias, Patterns & Pseudoscience « Andrea’s Buzzing About:

This essay relates directly to the previous post, and explains the phenomena called pareidolia.

Facial Recognition - Brain - Faces, Faces Everywhere - New York Times

Facial Recognition - Brain - Faces, Faces Everywhere - New York Times

While we Prosopagnosics don't always see the faces we are looking at, some people see faces in everyday objects.

Meeting Matt in London

Matt from my online Faceblind group, as I posed him in bad light so I could get him with the London Eye in the background. Tourists.

We agree to meet while I was in London learning about and getting tested for Prosopagnosia (PA). We both thought it would be interesting to meet someone with a similar lack of ability for recognizing one another. He conveniently posted himself directly beneath Big Ben, and waved to me as I approached after spotting my unnaturally red hair. I was relieved after that hard part was over, and thankful that he had made it so easy. I always have trepidation when going to meet people.

Matt again, finishing his slides on the Carsten Holler Exhibit at Tate Modern in London.

It was interesting to hear his anecdotes, and quite refreshing to speak to someone who knows what it is like to be so confused on a regular basis.

Showing off his advanced wheelie style. It takes no facial recognition ability to enjoy a good slide.

Matt had previously met someone else from the same online group who actually lives just outside London and was featured in an article in the Times Educational Supplement which I will link to in a subsequent post.

This was my first meeting with another PA, and based on my meeting with Matt, I would highly recommend it.

One thing we ended up doing is comparing anecdotes, which always happens because you just want to be able to tell people the weird situations you live through, and have them understand. We discussed coping skills, which can be valuable. I also had lots of questions about coming out to people about PA and his experience with it. He has come out to more people than I have, even though he has known about his PA for a much shorter time, partly because it is better that way in his work environment, partly because he is more brave than me.

Matt has been in touch with Dr. Duchaine, and intends to be tested quite soon. I found myself desperately wishing, even as I was taking the tests before I met with him, that he had already taken the tests so I could compare the experience with him. It is just not the same talking to a Neurotypical (NT) person about your reaction to the tests. I guess that is a good reason for us to keep in touch.

Face blindness not just skin deep - CNN.com

Face blindness not just skin deep - CNN.com

This week CNN aired a story on the person who started our online PA group. This is a link to a related article that contains a small video of him being interviewed.

Testing Day 1

Finished the first day of testing with Dr. Duchaine. It was intense as I thought it would be, requiring serious concentration for a couple hours. The team at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, was amiable and low-key, which helped reduce the pressure (I'm very competitive) of testing. It is great to talk to people with such a depth of knowledge on this obscure subject.

It solidified some ideas I previously had about my own face perception ability, and connected the dots in other areas. I won' t go into detail about the tests or how I did on certain sections. My results were as I would have assumed in some areas, and surprising in others. I thought I did MUCH worse on one section than my scores showed, indicating that I may not have good grasp of my own ability.

At this pointI highly recommend getting tested. It really helped coalesce, in my mind, a definition of my specific case of Prosopagnosia. This will eventually help me tell my story to others.

Tomorrow, Day 2 of testing.