WEBVTT - Face Blindness 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:14.440 Works dot com. Hey you welcome to stuff to Blow 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:16.560 your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:18.920 McCormick and Robert. I got a point of etiquette question 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:21.400 for you. All right, hit me. Do you think it 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:25.480 is polite to show up to work wearing a ski mask, 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.760 m a full ski mask, assuming you don't have a reason, 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.040 like you don't you don't have burns or something like that, 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:34.200 or if you know, if you maybe if you work 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:37.720 at a you know, an antarctic receipt research facility and 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:41.720 you have to walk across you know, the barren waste lands, No, 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:43.599 I can think that would be okay, I'm saying more 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:45.320 like you work in an office, or maybe you know, 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.159 you work at Walmart. Um, yeah, I'd say that this 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:51.360 is a terrible idea. You should not wear that full 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:54.280 scheme ask to work because people are going to assume 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:56.520 that you're hiding your identity and possibly about to rob 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.040 the place. Yeah, that seems pretty obvious. But do you 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.680 ever stop to think, Wait a minute, why biologically is 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:06.440 that the case? Why is it that hiding your face 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:11.280 is an extreme social taboo? Whereas hiding other parts of 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.399 your body is not like it's not taboo to wear 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:16.559 a shirt to work or to wear gloves to work. 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:18.440 I mean you, you would expect certain parts of the 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:21.760 body to be covered, and people could potentially identify you 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:24.240 by other parts of your body than your face. But 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:26.959 that just seems like like ridiculous to us. Of course 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:29.360 it's the face we would identify you by. Well, I 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:33.840 think identity is key here because a mask gives one 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.320 the ability to, i mean certainly to change inter identity 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:39.679 to a certain extent, because we've we've discussed this before 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:46.880 and with clothed cognition, but a mask changes outer identity. Um, 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:49.880 you look to all the various great mass traditions and 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:53.520 human history, you know, from from very very old, very 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:59.080 ancient practices to even more recent creations such as lucid 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:03.360 libray masks, like the mask changes. It transforms the individual 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:07.400 into something else. Putting on a mask inherently suggests a 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:12.480 kind of performance, right yeah, yeah, you are becoming something 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:16.000 other than your you know, baseline identity. And on the 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:19.880 Lucha liber note, I do recommend anyone who hasn't watched 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.200 one of these matches check out a mask versus mask 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:25.840 match like a big one, and then watch the ending, 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:30.200 in which generally like an older luchador will unmask and 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.160 in doing so they will cease to be this fabulous 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.120 panther person or you know, or some other kind of 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:41.000 exotic semi as tech creation, and they become this older 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:43.920 man and and and he'll and he'll be in tears, 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:46.320 and sometimes family members will be there in tears. And 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:49.280 even though it is all performance, uh and it is 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:52.520 uh there, there is still this like there's a passion there, 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:56.919 there's a true transformation. There's a loss of an established identity. 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.680 Why is that the thing that's so emotional? I mean, 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:02.800 it's silly to ask. It's so obvious to us that 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:06.040 faces are the things that are the visual marker of 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:08.520 the identity of a person. But yet again I insist 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.520 it doesn't have to be that way. That's just how 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:16.000 it is. Biologically. For some reason, we are incredibly compelled 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:18.920 by the image of the human face. And it's the 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:22.079 thing that most people tend to most associate with the 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:27.200 humans identity. Right, We're we're just strongly wired for faces. Yeah. 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:29.000 A fun note that I believe I've probably mentioned on 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:32.520 the show before is that the human face is a 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:35.840 communications array input output, right, Yeah, so it's not only 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:39.480 for purposes of receiving communication via the organs positioned on it, 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:43.720 but it also conveys. So yeah, we've heard for instance, uh, 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:46.160 there's a two thousand eight check study that found that 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:50.240 facial expressions alone speak a thousand words. We've discussed micro 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:52.960 expressions on the show before as well, but I always 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:55.080 come back to an interesting point raised in a two 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:58.080 thousand twelve U c l A primate study. The more 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.760 solitary is species, the more wild and colorful. Meanwhile, the 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:06.560 more social primates are more plain faced, because this theoretically 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:10.760 allows us to see facial expressions more easily. So yeah, 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:12.280 you don't want to like a bunch of wild colors. 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:14.680 You want something kind of plain that you can in 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.640 which you can see all the variants nuances of communication. 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:21.320 Almost makes me think of that in a time when 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.360 written manuscripts were rare, there was a lot of adornment 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:28.159 and calligraphy and illumination of them, and now now that 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:31.360 they're much more common, they tend to be more utility oriented. 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:33.080 You just want to be able to clearly read what's 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:35.080 on the page, right, and of course, you still need 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.080 to be able to identify individual faces, because that's part 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:42.080 of knowing who's who within a social order. Incidentally, research 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:45.920 shows that chimps can also recall the specific butts of 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:50.240 other chimps as readily as we recognize specific faces. And 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:52.360 of course this this I can't help, since we're talking 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:55.000 about face blindness today, I can't have help, But wonder 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:58.279 if it's possible for a chimp to experience butt blindness. 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:02.160 I would venture a guest that, say, standard neurological deviation 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:05.560 from what what chimp brains normally do. There are but 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.599 blind chimps. But yeah, so we are going to be 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.600 talking about this concept of face blindness today, and this 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:15.039 is a topic that's come up tangentially on the show before, 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:17.679 but today people have asked for it, and we've decided 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:20.800 to devote an entire episode to it. If you've never 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:26.200 heard otherwise, you might just assume that everybody has roughly 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:31.520 the same ability to instantly process and recognize visual face data. 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.000 Maybe you assume that there's like a normal range of 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:37.320 ability at recognizing faces. Some people are a little better 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:39.080 at it, some people are a little worse at it. 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.120 You probably know some people who recognize every actor in 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:45.279 a movie. Some people who don't recognize people quite as easily. 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:48.479 But you might just assume there's a standard range. Pretty 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:52.280 much everybody reads faces, and that's just how it is, right, Yeah, 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:56.800 chances are, unless you've come to believe you you are 0:05:57.040 --> 0:06:00.240 are better or less able than other individuals, you doably 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:03.520 think that your facial recognition is the normal level of 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:07.359 facial recognition, and it's important to recognize that for most people. 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:12.280 I think that normal level of facial recognition is incredibly powerful. 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:16.080 Like it's a highly tuned neural instrument that is able 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:19.360 to read tiny variations in visual data and match that 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:25.240 to extremely detailed amounts of mental concepts and associations and memories. 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:28.719 Like it's a truly remarkable process. How easily and quickly 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:33.360 most people are able to match faces to other information. Yeah, 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:36.520 I I would uh, I would certainly encourage everyone after 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:39.800 this episode to to think about it as you're recognizing faces, 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:41.719 as you're you know, glimpsing someone you know for the 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.560 first time, or that fabulous experience when you glimpse somebody 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:48.120 that you think you know and then realize that you 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:51.280 don't know them, Like it it passes the initial UH 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:54.600 tests of facial recognition before it's ruled that no, this 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.120 is a stranger who just has a very similar nose 0:06:57.200 --> 0:06:59.719 to your friend. But the truth is, in fact that 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:04.560 everybody is within this normal range of facial recognition ability. 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:08.880 So the British neurologist Oliver Sacks, who wrote memorably about 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:11.440 the many ways that our brains can behave abnormally in 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:13.600 books like The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:16.920 which was published in nineteen eighty five. He wrote about 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:20.840 his own problems with recognizing faces in a truly excellent 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:23.240 two thousand ten article for The New Yorkers. So he 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:26.119 starts by talking about his childhood and he writes about 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:27.760 how as long as he could remember, he had a 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:30.400 hard time identifying a person by their face, like when 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:33.040 he was a kid. He didn't think of this as 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:36.600 a particular neurological disorder. He just thought he was quote 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:40.120 bad with faces. And you know, as you can imagine, 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:42.360 this would be embarrassing because he would see people he 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:46.040 knew intimately and not recognize them on site. What comes 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:48.840 naturally to most people, like picking a familiar face out 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.240 of a crowd, would become a difficult and laborious process, 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.720 and he found he had to carefully and intentionally memorize 0:07:55.760 --> 0:08:00.160 particular features and characteristics to remember what people look to like. 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:03.800 So somebody might have, Okay, that guy's got heavy eyebrows 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:06.640 and thick glasses and red hair, so I can log 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:09.600 that and remember it for next time. Most of the 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:12.200 time people don't have to uh use this kind of 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:16.160 conscious effort to remember facial characteristics of people. But even then, 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:19.600 Sacks says it often didn't work. Like after his graduation, 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:21.720 he had high school friends who could go back and 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.760 look at photos of old classmates and recognize hundreds of them, 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:28.480 and Sacks himself could not recognize a single person from 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:32.160 his high school by their face, not one. And you 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:34.320 might think, well, at least he be able to recognize 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:38.280 his own picture right, not necessarily. Later in this piece, 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:42.520 Sacks writes, quote, on several occasions, I have apologized for 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:46.320 almost bumping into a large bearded man, only to realize 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.319 that the large bearded man was myself in a mirror. 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:53.640 The opposite situation once occurred at a restaurant. Sitting at 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.640 a sidewalk table, I turned towards the restaurant window and 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.679 began grooming my beard as I often do. I then 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:01.600 real is that what I had taken to be my 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:06.200 reflection was not grooming himself but looking at me oddly. Huh, 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:09.440 you know this, this does remind me. We uh, we 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:14.280 touched on self facial recognition a little bit in our 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:17.880 most recent Ignoble Prizes episode of study with twins, but 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:21.960 with the inverted ones. Yeah, but it does make one 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:25.480 realize here talking about Oliver Sax seeing himself in the mirror, 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:29.200 that for the vast majority of a human history, like 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:32.320 self facial recognition, like what is what is that for? 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:35.959 When would you ever see your own face? I guess 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.160 only when looking into maybe into a body of water, right, yeah, 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.080 but then only faintly, maybe seeing aspects of your own 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:46.000 face in um, you know, in biological children or in 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:48.600 your parents. But even then you you kind of need 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:51.960 some sort of clear reflection that you're going off of. 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:54.680 For all that, I'm just gonna earmark that one for later. 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:57.760 Maybe we'll come back to considerations of self facial recognition. 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:00.319 No, no no, no, that that is actually really interesting because 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:02.920 we Yeah, you're right, for most of human history, there 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.040 wouldn't have been a whole lot of opportunities to see 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:09.120 reflections of oneself, except maybe when over a body of water, 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:12.920 and one could potentially pose it that modern humans who 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:16.640 are constantly looking into reflective surfaces or looking at photos 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.560 of themselves are having in fact their minds warped from 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:24.640 from this constant exposure to the image of the self, 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:27.319 Whereas that's not something you would actually see maybe more 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:29.160 than a couple of times a day normally when you 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:32.000 go to drink from a pool. Now you see it 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:34.640 every time you go to the bathroom, every time you 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:37.000 get up in the morning, probably more times than that. 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:39.600 You're taking selfies all day. A bet, maybe we'll have 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:41.960 to come back and do an episode on Narcissus. Yeah, yeah, 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:44.160 But anyway, So I want to zero in on some 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:47.240 of the particulars that Oliver Sacks talks about in his 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:50.320 own case of face blindness, because it's not just that 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:54.679 he has trouble recognizing faces. There's some interesting characteristics to 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:57.160 this condition he has. One of the things he talks 0:10:57.160 --> 0:10:59.479 about is that he has a lot more difficulty recognizing 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:02.959 people when he sees them out of context. And an 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:06.000 example of that might be Okay, so you have an 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:08.920 appointment to meet a certain person at a certain place 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.560 at a certain time every week, and you go and 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:13.760 when you see that person in the time and place 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:16.600 you expect to meet them, you're pretty sure you recognize them, 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:19.319 this is the right person. But then you could see 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:23.280 the same person a few minutes later in a place 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.480 where you don't expect to see them, maybe you know, 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:29.400 downstairs and around the corner, and not recognize them at all. Yeah, 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:31.120 I mean, I think how jarring it can be to 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:33.680 run into someone in the wrong place, you know, out 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.720 of place. I'm not supposed to see a co worker 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:39.040 at the grocery store. But it throws you. It throws 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.200 you completely off. But if you had a problem with 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.079 facial problem, a problem with facial recognition on top of that, 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:46.280 it could be even worse, because then you'd have someone 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.679 who looks mostly like a stranger to you saying like, 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.840 oh hie, and you don't know how to respond. So, 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:55.960 for Sax, the inability to recognize faces is also paired 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:59.760 with an equally frustrating inability to recognize places. He reports 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:03.760 that he would get lost extremely easily, even in familiar neighborhoods, 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:05.840 and he tells a story about how one time he 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:08.040 was trying to walk home in the rain, and he 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:10.960 walked past his own house, his own place of residence, 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:13.480 several times in the rain, before somebody yelled at him 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:15.640 and is like, what are you doing. He thought he 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.360 was lost and didn't realize he'd made it home. And 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.360 this isn't just for Sacks. The environmental blindness is apparently 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:23.800 something that a not not all by any means, but 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:28.120 a significant subset of people with face blindness also experience. 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.040 Another a few other things about Sacks. He reports that 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:34.040 members of his own family seem to have the same condition, 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:37.480 implying that there may be some kind of genetic component. Uh. 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:41.520 He notes that he can actually recognize caricatures of people 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:46.280 better than photos or realistic drawings of them. Yeah, because 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:50.760 it's probably drawing attention to the sort of like notable 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:54.400 features that you would need a queue into to circumvent 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:58.400 um facial blindness. Yeah, exactly, Like, Okay, this person has 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:00.920 enormous eyebrows, and then that the first thing that a 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:04.760 character sure artist is going to draw just outrageous eyebrows. 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:11.040 It makes me wonder if there are face blind caricature artists. Interesting. Yeah. 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:13.520 Another thing he says is that he's better at recognizing 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:15.880 people by the way they move or what he calls 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:19.440 quote their motor style, than by their face. So try 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:22.439 to imagine that if, like you were better at identifying 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.480 a person by their gait and their posture and you know, 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:28.720 the way they move their arms, then by the stuff 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:31.360 that's on the front of their head. But this last 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:33.400 point is something that I think is really interesting, and 0:13:33.440 --> 0:13:35.280 I do want to emphasize it's been true about a 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:37.719 lot of what I've read about face blindness, or as 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.400 the proper name for face blindness is prosopagnosia, And we'll 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:43.760 get more into the general idea of agnosia in a minute. 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:47.440 But but that sax says that while he has trouble 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:52.240 recognizing individual faces or telling them apart, he's perfectly capable 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:56.800 of recognizing things about faces, like the expressions they make, 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:00.800 or whether the face is attractive of And I think 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:04.440 this is a crucial distinction. It's not generally that the 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:08.360 prosopagnostic person can't see faces. It's not like it's just 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.400 a blur and there's nothing there, But they lack some 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:16.199 kind of crucial recognition, sorting and storage capability. And based 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:18.640 on my reading, I think I've come up with an 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:21.000 analogy that that sort of makes sense for people who 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:25.200 don't have a condition like this. Think about bushes of 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.800 the same type, like holly bushes. So imagine two different 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:32.040 holly bushes of roughly the same size. If you are 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:35.920 a neurologically typical person, you can perfectly well see both 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.480 of these bushes and describe their characteristics, and you can 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.400 see little things that might be different about them. But 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:45.760 would you be able to recognize the same holly bush 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:47.480 that you looked at a few minutes ago if it 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:51.600 was placed in a different context. I mean probably not right, 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:53.320 you see a bush? Yeah, I mean, I mean that's 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.320 certainly the way I feel. Based on my experiences with 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:58.840 with identifying plants, I've always had a great deal of 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:02.840 difficulty even even like determining something that I need to 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:05.560 be aware of, like poison ivy I have. I seem 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:10.040 to have poison ivy blindness despite being uh very susceptible 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:11.920 to it. Yeah. Well, because I mean a lot of 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:14.600 things in the plant world, your mind is not highly 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:17.520 attuned and noticing minute differences in so you're just seeing 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.360 a lot of leaves, right, even though you can see 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.920 them fine, there's nothing wrong with your seeing. It's a 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:30.000 problem with like discerning little differences and recognizing those differences. Now, 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.440 earlier you mentioned the idea could have characterture artist have 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:35.880 face blindness. Well, I don't know about character artists, but 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:39.440 we do have one very notable example of an artist 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:42.160 with face blindness. Yeah, Sax actually talks about this in 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:44.880 this article. But the artist Chuck Close is known for 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:49.280 having prosopagnosia, so he can't recognize people by their faces. 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:52.160 And yet what is the art he's most known for. 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:57.000 It is these huge, very detailed, sort of photo realistic 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.400 portraits of people's faces. Yeah, which is which is always 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:04.240 fascinating me because you do see this, this contemplation of 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:07.360 what it is to identify a face in his work. Yeah, 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:09.120 I think this also sort of highlights the thing I 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:10.760 was just saying about. The Holly Bush is right, it's 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:14.320 not that you don't see the face, but that it's 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:17.920 some kind of storage and recognition and sorting problem. Like 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:20.760 he apparently can see faces, great, because he does a 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:22.800 mate like he sees more detail in a face than 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:25.640 I do. But again, this comes back to the truth 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.080 that he's not It's not that he cannot see the face. 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.800 He just he processes the information of the face in 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:34.960 a different way. Right. Another interesting example of a famous 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:37.760 person with prosopagnosia is Jane Goodall. I don't think I 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:40.360 was aware that Jane Goodall had face blindness. Yes, Sex 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:42.920 writes about her, and she so she says, quote, I've 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:46.520 had huge problems with people with average faces. I have 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:49.520 to search for a mole or something. So she's saying, like, 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:52.760 I have to find some kind of unique identifying characteristic 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:55.920 to remember, you know. Yeah, when there is a uniformity 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:59.920 of a photo style and personal styling, it can be 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.480 rather difficult. I've, for instance, I've had this situation where 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:06.479 I'll go on IMDb and I'll try to figure out 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.720 who a particular actor is in a film, and and 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:12.359 then you start looking at the head shots. Is this 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:14.480 the person? Yeah, It's like sometimes there'll be five or 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:17.280 six people in a film that have essentially the same 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:19.440 head shot. Like it's this because they're all styled in 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.240 the same way. They have kind of the same facial features. 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:25.240 And I'm I'm not talking about your Irran Pearlman's here. 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.560 I'm talking about your your leading man, leading lady material 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:33.560 like sometimes there is an uncomfortable uniformity to the dimensions 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:35.320 of the face and the way that they are styled 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:37.600 and photographed. Oh yeah, I mean, I think there's no 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:41.600 denying that certain faces are easier to recognize than others. Right, 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.400 Some just appear more distinctive, and other people have more 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:48.199 generic or average types of features given a certain population. 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:50.399 One of the things that this makes me think about, though, 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:53.760 is that for people with typical face recognition skills, I 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:57.840 think it might not immediately be apparent how problematic this 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.000 could be. Being typical, I think sometimes leaves you in 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.320 a position where you're not prone to imagine the difficulties 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:07.479 that people in atypical conditions have to work through. Indeed, 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:09.680 we tend to think of it as a bedrock aspect 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:12.840 of our reality. But we're not in the world as 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:14.960 it is. We were in the world as we perceive it, 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:18.240 the world constructed via the instruments of our perception, and 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:20.520 if one of those instruments is out of tune, it 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:24.040 changes the world. Yeah, I mean. Sachs actually says that 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:27.080 he thinks some of what his entire life has been 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:32.760 interpreted as his shyness or his social ineptitude, his eccentricity, 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:37.480 or even his Asperger syndrome is actually a consequence of 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:41.920 his difficulty with recognizing people's faces. And many people over 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:45.119 the years contacted him with similar comments that you know, really, 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:47.080 what was going on with them in their lives is 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:50.199 they had trouble recognizing people by their faces, whereas all 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:53.080 the people around them did not have this trouble, and 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:55.800 this was interpreted by people around them as them being 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:59.199 rude or aloof or worse. Anyway, I guess we can 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:00.800 take a quick break, then when we come back, we 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:05.560 can talk about the condition of generalized agnosias. Thank you, 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:08.800 thank you. All right, we're back. So today we've been 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:13.600 talking about prosopagnosia, or face blindness, and prosopagnosia seems to 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.040 be a specific manifestation of a more generalized condition known 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:21.320 as agnosia, which is a failure to recognize something. Yeah, 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:27.840 Agnosia is a broad category of stimuli transmission scrambling conditions, 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:30.440 so it's a it's a rare area of neural disorder 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:34.080 that disrupts the ability to process sensory information, and this 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:38.880 includes such specific conditions as phone agnosia or voice blindness. 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:43.240 As well as, of course, UH prosopagnosia face blindness, which 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.240 we're focusing on today, and there are a number of 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.240 other varieties as well. I actually ran across a really 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:51.159 interesting one when I when I was trying to figure 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:54.360 out these characters that pop up in our Scott Baker's 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:59.240 Second Apocalypse saga, These these non men, essentially the that 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:02.679 the l of his world. I remember you talking to 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:04.960 Scott about those and you were saying, I think that 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:09.040 they couldn't see art, right, Well, they couldn't see paintings. Uh, 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.080 it's and this is something that a human character says 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:15.040 of the non men. So I was curious. I was like, well, 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:17.400 what could that consist of? What could make someone be 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:21.160 enabled to to see uh, two dimensional art? That would 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:24.000 make you have to rely on three dimensional art? Of course, 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:27.400 this brought me to the realm of agnosia. Uh. There 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:30.680 are a number of cases that relate directly to the 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:33.600 cognitive experience of music, as well as various forms of 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:37.399 visual community visual information and UH I actually ran across 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:41.080 the case of an artist who, following an accident, developed 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:45.800 an inability quote to identify single objects on visual presentation 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:50.760 and displayed marked difficulty in interpreting complex objects, depicted scenes, 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:55.440 and partially occluded figures, so he could still recognize geometric forms, 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.119 perceive optical illusions, and copy designs. He could, in fact, 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:02.200 he could in fact ualize many of his artistic skills, 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:06.920 but his post injury work exhibited quote an over elaboration 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:09.480 of detail. Yeah. I think it's interesting that you mentioned 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:12.040 he could copy designs. So this tells you there's not 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.479 really a problem with the seeing aspect if he's just 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:17.320 trying to copy like lines and shading and stuff like that. 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.520 But it's a problem with the recognizing aspect of the brain. 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:23.960 What the brain does with the visual information once it 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:26.600 comes in. Now, as you mentioned, I did give the 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:29.520 chance to actually ask Scott about the non men and 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:31.639 their inability to see paintings in one of our two 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:34.960 thousands seventeen interviews with him. Uh, And so I thought 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:37.800 I would just cut out his answer here and uh 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:41.280 and read it for everyone. Uh. He says, quote, you 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.520 always want to distinguish your various races and species you 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:47.360 create in speca to fiction, and this notion of non 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:50.520