Recognising other people by decoding the subtle contours of their face is a complicated task that we take for granted. But imagine if all faces looked the same and you couldn’t tell whether someone was a stranger or your mother. Welcome to the world of the face-blind.
Prosopagnosia, the technical term for face-blindness, is an unusual condition the neurologist Oliver Sacks described in his bestselling book: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat.
Those with this condition are often no different from the rest of us in every other way. Because of this it is easy for people to go through life without realising there is an aspect of their perception that is quite unusual.
