Voice 1
Thank you for joining us for today’s Spotlight program. I’m Liz Waid.
Voice 2
And I’m Joshua Leo. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no matter where in the world they live.
Voice 1
How do you recognize other people - like your friends, your parents, or your wife or husband? How do you recognize yourself? If you are like many people in the world, you may not be able to explain it. You do not think about trying to recognize a person. You just look at their face and recognize them.
Voice 2
But this is not the case for Bill Choisser. Bill lives in the United States. He can see well. But he cannot recognize the faces he sees - not even his own mother. He tells about one of his experiences.
Voice 3
“Once, around mid-day, I met my mother while walking down the street. I did not recognize her. We walked towards each other. We passed within a meter of each other. The sidewalk was not busy. The only way I know this happened is that she told me about it that night. She was not happy about this incident. And she has never forgiven me for it!”
Voice 1
Bill suffers from prosopagnosia, or face blindness. For someone who does not suffer from face blindness, this condition can be hard to understand. In fact, until a few years ago, there were only a few reported cases. But face blindness may be more common than you think. Recent studies suggest that one in every fifty [50] people may have some form of face blindness. What is this condition? Why does it happen? Are you face blind? Today’s Spotlight is on face blindness.
Voice 2
The brain is a complex and amazing organ. Scientists do not understand exactly how the brain sees, processes, and recognizes faces. But they do know one thing. When a baby is born, he already has the ability to recognize faces. They say that babies know the difference between a male and a female face. Babies can usually recognize their mothers. And a baby likes to look at his mother’s face more than any other face.
Voice 1
But this part of the brain does not work for a person who is face blind. Face blindness is a condition that prevents a person from recognizing faces. However, a person’s ability to see is not affected.
Voice 2
Usually, when you look at a person’s face, your brain works fast. Your brain gives you information about that person. You can quickly see if he has light or dark skin, how old he is, his sex, and if he is sad or happy. A person with face blindness can also see all these things. But for some reason, a face blind person just cannot recognize the person.
Voice 1
Sometimes not recognizing people can lead to trouble. Cecelia Burmen lives in Stockholm, Sweden. Even as a child, Cecelia had problems recognizing faces. She would meet people. But when she saw them again, she would not recognize them. She says that people thought she was rude or uncaring. She would not say hello to people she had met before. She simply did not know who they were.
Voice 4
“People think I’m just snobby...It makes me really, really sad to lose new friends because they think I could not bother to say hello.”
Voice 2
Gaylen Howard is another face blind person. She has trouble recognizing her own face!
Voice 5
“Sometimes in a crowded restroom, I see a mirror. In the mirror I can see a group of people. But I do not know which one of them is me. So, I move my face to make it look strange. Then I know which one is me.”
Voice 1
So, how does a person get face blindness? Well, there are two [2] ways. Some people with face blindness are born with the ability to recognize. But then, they suffer some kind of brain damage. Over thirty [30] years ago, Lincoln Holmes was in a car accident. The accident damaged his brain. He can still do everything just like before - walk, talk, and work. But, since the accident, Lincoln can no longer recognize faces. He cannot even recognize people he knew before the accident happened. In the past, doctors thought that brain damage was the only way to get face blindness.
Voice 2
However, scientists now believe that the most common way people get face blindness is from their parents - they inherit it! Recent studies suggest that face blindness stays in families.
Voice 1
Thomas and Martina Gr?ter are doctors in Germany. They studied six hundred and eighty nine [689] students. They found that seventeen [17] of these students suffered from some form of face blindness. And fourteen [14] of these students also had a family member with face blindness. The doctors now believe that a face blind person has a fifty percent [50%] chance of passing face blindness on to their children.
Voice 2
Face blind people usually develop their own methods to recognize faces. Cecelia cannot depend on her brain to recognize a person’s face. But, she has trained herself to look for other ways to recognize a person.
Voice 4
“When I try to recognize a person, this is what I look for. I look for their age and sex. I see these things as well as most people do. I look at a person’s general body shape, hair and face. I do see the details on a person’s face. I just have to use other brain centres to process the image I see. I look for the time and place that we meet. For example, when I am at work, I look for people I work with. I listen to the sound of a person’s voice. Hearing the voice of the person usually helps. I also look for what the person chose to talk about.”
Voice 1
For many people, face blindness feels like a heavy load that they must carry. They feel alone. They know that they are not normal. But they often do not know why. A face blind person may just think that she is very forgetful. Cecelia grew up face blind. But she never knew the name of her condition. Discovering that she had a real medical condition made Cecelia feel like this heavy load was lifted off her shoulders. She wants other people to feel this kind of freedom too. So she continues to spread information about face blindness in any way she can.
Voice 2
Doctor Richard Russell researches face blindness. He says that research for this condition is just beginning. And the most important thing is to keep telling more people about it.
Voice 6
“There are not any treatments for face blindness. Right now we are ... trying to understand what face blindness is. We are trying to tell more people about it - doctors and the public.”
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