Face blindness is more common than we previously thought

Researchers previously estimated that between 2 and 2.5 percent of the world’s population suffers from face blindness. But results from Harvard University indicate that one in 33, or 3.08 percent of the entire world’s population, meets the criteria for the diagnosis. And the reasons can be very different.

That’s an explanation Joseph DegutisProfessor of Psychiatry and first author of the study, which has been published in the scientific journal Cortex. Distinguish between two different types of face blindness.

One type comes from damage to certain areas of the brain and affects only about 1 in 30,000 people in the United States. The second type of face blindness is a lifelong condition, which has a genetic or developmental explanation. Which is more common, explains prof.

“All the standards are very strict.”

The results of the study are based on questionnaires and tests conducted on 3341 people, who were asked about face recognition problems in daily life and whose ability to recognize new faces was tested.

Just over 100 people were found to have some form of face blindness, and the results revealed a smaller group of 31 people with severe face blindness and a group of 72 people with a milder version of the problem.

So the Harvard researchers also believe that we should view face blindness as a spectrum, where the degree of severity in an individual can vary greatly and the criteria prior to diagnosis were very harsh.

“The majority of researchers have applied very stringent diagnostic criteria, and many people with significant recognition problems in everyday life have been wrongly told that they do not have prosopagnosia,” says Professor Joseph Degutis. to Harvard News.

It emphasizes that acknowledging the problem can be of paramount importance to the individual.

“It’s important to broaden the diagnosis, because just knowing you have a mild form of face blindness can help you take steps that minimize negative effects in daily life, such as telling colleagues or seeking treatment,” he explains.