Oliver Sacks of The New Yorker had an extremely interesting podcast concerning prosopagnosia. For those of you who do not know, prosopagnosia, is a medical condition which causes face blindness. Face blindness is simply when you don’t recognize your face or anyone else’s face. A person suffering from prosopagnosia, can look in the mirror and not even realize it is themself they are viewing.

The disorder can be extremely difficult to live with, as well as embarrassing. You may wish to listen to the mp3 of the podcast at the New Yorker website located at http://www.newyorker.com/online/2010/08/30/100830on_audio_sacks.

Below I have provided a couple quotes from people suffering from the disorder. It just shows how serious and frustrating prosopagnosia can really be:

* “I couldn’t recognize my reflection as me until my 20s but I always saw CLEARLY. Nothing was a blur. But the face meant nothing, it seemed like a stranger, but I did get used to ‘her’ and that she was always in the mirror.”

* “At the club I saw someone strange staring at me, and I asked the steward who it was. You’ll laugh at me. I’d been looking at myself in a mirror”
Prosopagnosic patient, (cited in Martha J. Farah, Visual Agnosia, 2004)