Prosopagnosia, otherwise known as facial blindness, is a disorder that can be characterized as the inability to recognize faces, resulting from a severe failure to develop the necessary neurological systems needed for facial recognition. The two types of prosopagnosia are designated as developmental/congenital prosopagnosia and acquired prosopagnosia. While developmental prosopagnosia develops without any prior head injuries and can be linked to genetics, acquired prosopagnosia can develop from brain damage, which can be caused by a stroke or head injury. This condition tends to mostly be studied in adults, and with such insufficient research on the topic, many children with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed prosopagnosia have a predisposition for developing other disorders in the future, such as autism spectrum disorder (Dalrymple et. al). It's imperative that we begin to understand it in a more adequate manner, so looking into face- sensitive areas in the brain and seeing how they respond during development might lead to a way in which we can further out research.
Research has shown that the pinpointed cortical areas for facial processing are the fusiform gyrus, as well as the temporal and occipital lobes, as they show activation in terms of face selectivity. Interestingly enough, the disorder can range from not being able to recognize their family members or facial expressions, to not being able to recognize themselves, and to not being able to confidently discern between mundane objects. The paper "Fusiform gyrus face-selectivity reflects facial recognition ability" researchers Furl et al., found that there was a significant correlation between fusiform selectivity and behavioral face identification ability, meaning that the fusiform gyrus play a role in facial recognition ability as prosopagnosic subjects had difficulty discerning between faces and cars.
Conte et. al. explains that cortical areas in the ventral visual pathway become more tuned towards facial recognition at the early age of 3 months and continues over the year. Although many other areas of the brain tend to react to facial structures, it is also reiterated that significant facially targeted activation can be seen in the lingual and middle/posterior fusiform gyri. We as people have a certain disadvantage when it comes to diagnosing at such a young age, and that is because we don't tend to overanalyze a child's behaviors, especially not at the ripe age of 1. Brains are extremely malleable during our first years of life, and so studying a child's brain would certainly be more difficult. Nonetheless, it's crucial to any future generations that we begin to study such things from a young age, as this research could bridge a gap between any causal relations of prosopagnosia and help aid such a dire affliction. As you can imagine, it would be extremely advantageous for our world to be able to diagnose such conditions in its early stages, in order to prevent fomenting such issues, and any other dysfunctions that may come with it.
References:
Dalrymple, K. A., Corrow, S., Yonas, A., & Duchaine, B. (2012). Developmental prosopagnosia in childhood. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 29(5-6), 393–418. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2012.722547
Furl, N., Garrido, L., Dolan, R. J., Driver, J., & Duchaine, B. (2011). Fusiform gyrus face selectivity relates to individual differences in facial recognition ability. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(7), 1723–1740. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2010.21545
Face blindness: What is it, causes, diagnosis, and more ... (n.d.). Retrieved October 23, 2021, from https://www.osmosis.org/answers/face-blindness.
Conte, S., Richards, J. E., Guy, M. W., Xie, W., & Roberts, J. E. (2020). Face-sensitive brain responses in the first year of life. NeuroImage, 211, 116602. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116602
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