Prozopagnoziya

Description:

Prozopagnoziya (from. - Greek , prósōpon — the person and , agnōsía — not recognition) is other a disorder of perception of the person at which ability to learn faces is lost, but at the same time ability to learn objects in general is kept. Usually this state is connected with injury of a brain in the field of the right nizhnezatylochny area, but the new facts showed that there is also inborn form of this frustration.

For the aid to the people suffering from a prozopagnoziya the successful therapies helping them to learn to recognize people on such features as gait, a hairstyle, a voice, a figure warehouse, a manner to put on, etc. were developed. As usually the face is the most specific feature and the most important distinctive factor in memory, for people it is be correctly difficult to correlate information on people to this state and to lead normal social life.

Prozopagnoziya reasons:

Bilateral defeat of a lateral  occipitotemporal crinkle and  lingual crinkle interrupts interaction of a visual afferentation with complexes of afferentation of other modalities. Face recognition (prozopagnoziya) and objects (subject agnosia) is as a result broken.

Prozopagnoziya symptoms:

Prozopagnoziya is called by an injury, or growth of a tumor, or that most often, vascular disorders in the right lower occipital area, is frequent with distribution of the center on adjacent departments a temporal and parietal lobe. Other aspects of system of recognition usually remain intact with prozopagnozik. But it is not defect of perception as such patients easily define, two persons are identical or not. Moreover, they recognize the person if look at him and at the same time hear his voice. Thus, the prozopagnoziya is a modal and specific disturbance at which visual information does not interact with information of other modalities and therefore it cannot be interpreted as this or that image which is stored in memory.

It is characterized by disturbance of recognition of familiar faces. Learning parts of the face and distinguishing the person from other objects, patients cannot define its individual accessory, sometimes are not capable to distinguish faces of men and women, features of their mimicry. Do not learn also a face of close relatives (the husband, the wife, children, the attending physician), and in hard cases do not recognize own person in a mirror. At recognition of people patients use bypass ways, for example, recognition on a voice, gait, a smell of perfume, etc. Also recognition of animals and birds is quite often broken. In mild cases recognition of persons only in photos and at cinema is broken. There is a basis to regard agnosia on faces as manifestation of more general defect — inability to estimate on these or those specific and evident signs an originality of an object or its image which allows to learn this specific object among objects of the same look, for example, to find the mug or a hairbrush among other mugs or hairbrushes. On this basis this form of agnosia is often designated as agnosia of the individualized signs. Agnosia on faces can take place for lack of subject and other agnosias, but in some cases is combined with other Gnostic frustration, in particular simultaneous or color agnosias or unilateral optiko-space agnosia and disturbances of "body scheme".

The person with various forms of a prozopagnoziya usually differs in nothing from the healthy person. One of the first complaints of the patient will be that to him it is difficult, it is sometimes impossible to distinguish in new photos of the face of relatives, friends. It becomes difficult for it to distinguish heroes in movies — they for it as like as two peas.

According to Antonio Damazio, some patients with severe forms of a prozopagnoziya do not distinguish not only persons, but also in general any objects belonging to the same type of objects. For example, they perceive the person only as the person, the car — as the car and cannot define whose this person or what brand this car.

One more curious side of the problem: from a prozopagnoziya in old age lefthanders whose phenomenon is quite well investigated suffer preferential. It is noticed that giving preference to the letter the left hand more often are born in late marriages, than at young parents. Discovery it is made quite recently and the psychologist possesses from Canada S. Coren. Age, physiologically normal for a child-bearing, from her point of view — 18 — 24 years. It made certain calculations according to which at 30 — 35-year-old parents of lefthanders are born 25% more, at 35 — 39-year-old — already for 69%, and at 40-year-old fathers and mothers the probability of birth of the child lefthander is very close to 100%.

Other phenomenon of a prozopagnoziya consists in the worst storing of people to whom the patient contacts in everyday life, than distant relatives. Most likely, it is connected with several factors:
in everyday life people constantly change clothes — to the patient difficultly to adapt and remember these trifles;
often contacts to distant relatives and distant friends of the patient by phone — it promotes the best storing of a timbre of a voice, conversation manners.