What Is Prosopagnosia? Actor Shenaz Treasury Diagnosed With Face Blindness

Actor Shenaz Treasury known for her role in the 2003 film Ishq Vishk revealed she has been diagnosed with prosopagnosia.

Shenaz Treasury took to her Instagram to share the news. She said, “Now I understand why I’ve never been able to put faces together. It’s a cognitive disorder.” Treasury said that while she faces issues remembering people’s faces, she was able to recognise them by their voices.

Treasury shared information about the cognitive disorder along with her experience with it. Actor Brad Pitt had also recently shared that he believed he had the disorder but has never been officially diagnosed.

What Is Prosopagnosia?

Prosopagnosia is also known as face blindness; it is a cognitive disorder of face perception and impairs the ability to recognise faces. The disorder is not related to a person’s eyesight or vision, a person may see the person’s face clearly but will not be able to identify the face easily.

Types Of Prosopagnosia

There are two forms of the disorder, acquired and developmental.

People with the acquired form of the disorder were not born with it and got it from a head injury or damage to the brain. It is a rare form of the disorder and people will notice they have it once they realise they can no longer identify people as they once did. After going through an event that affects your brain, such as a stroke, a person can get the disorder.

This form of the disorder often involves areas of the brain that control the brain’s perception and memory (occipital lobes and temporal lobes).

People with developmental prosopagnosia have the condition without any brain damage. Some data shows that genetic factors may cause the disorder and many people with the disorder have one close family member with the same disorder. Studies suggest that 1 in 50 people have this form of the disorder.

Symptoms

People with the condition may be looking directly at a person’s face but will only be able to focus on and identify individual features rather than the entire face. Once a person’s face is out of their view, they may be unable to remember how the face appeared.

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