Haven’t We Met
面孔失认症是一种神经心理性疾病，表现为对熟悉面孔的识别能力降低或丧失。一般来讲，面孔失认症病人不能再认出以往熟悉的知名人士及亲朋好友的面孔 。虽然面孔失认症病人在看一个面孔时，他们仍可描述面孔的特征，但是所有外显意义上的识别却不能进行或功能下降，对非常熟悉人的面孔也没有任何的熟悉感 。但一些病人解释面孔表情的能力或者匹配不熟悉面孔的能力仍相当完好。除了识别面孔外，识别其它物体的能力可能也相当完好，并且很多面孔失认症病人阅读也毫无困难。幼年时因脑损伤发生的病例不能识别任何面孔，尽管如此，他们仍可以学会阅读 ;这个现象说明了阅读和面孔识别实际上属不同类型的视觉分析。面孔失认症常伴随的一般功能障碍包括左上视野缺陷、全色盲和地形判断的功能异常（topo-graphical disorders）。病人所表现出的障碍是不能将熟悉面孔再认出来，在社交活动及工作中常常遇到一些问题，多数病人依赖其它线索来弥补面孔失认方面的缺陷 ，根据个体的其他特征，如声音、发型、服饰、步态等将其鉴别出来。
You wake up one morning to find a strange man standing in your kitchen; worse than that, he seems to have made himself completely at home.
Someone’s child is sitting in the living room watching television, on which somebody or other is giving a speech while standing next to a bust of some old guy. Who are these people? And where’s your family?
If you suffered from the neurological disorder called “facial agnosia,” a twilight-zone style experience of this sort might be a reality. Facial agnosia typically occurs to people who have received damage to the right hemisphere of the brain due to stroke or injury. People with facial agnosia lose the ability to recognize even the most familiar faces: in this case a husband and daughter, the president of the United States and a bust of Abraham Lincoln. In severe cases an examining physician will be able to hold up a photograph of him or herself and, seated in front of the patient with facial agnosia, ask if they recognize this person — to no avail.
What’s especially interesting to researchers about this condition is its specificity. Visual ability itself is not damaged, and the person with facial agnosia can still recognize anything else — except a face. Indeed, they can still describe faces very accurately, but only in the way one describes an object: “He needs a shave. He has droopy eyes. He has a small scar,” but never “Wait a minute — this is my high school yearbook picture.” Facial agnosia strongly suggests the existence of a mechanism in the brain devoted specifically to recognizing individuals we’ve seen before, a mechanism thought to exist in many other animals and even some insects.
译文：
你一早醒来，发现你的厨房里站着一个陌生人。更糟糕的是，他似乎像在自己家一样随意。
不知谁家的孩子正坐在客厅看电视，电视里播放着一个人站在一位老者的半身像旁高声演讲着。这些人是谁？你的家人去哪儿了？
如果你患上了一种脑神经失调的面孔失认症，那么像这样模糊不清的“过渡”式的经历或许是一个事实。面孔失认症常出现于人们大脑的右半球被打击或损伤后。患有面孔失认症的人会失去辨认面孔的能力，即使是最熟悉的人也不列外：比如丈夫或者女儿，美国的总统或者亚伯拉罕林肯的半身像。在严重的情况下，检查的医生会拿着一张自己的照片，坐在面孔失认症患者的前面，询问他们是否认识这个人，但是完全不起作用。
对于研究者来说这种情况最有趣的就是它的特殊性。视觉能力本身没有损坏，面孔失认症患者仍然能够辨别别的事物-除了脸。事实上，他们仍然可以非常准确地描述面孔，但是就像描述物体似的。“他需要刮胡子，他有双下垂的眼睛，他有一个小疤痕”。但是从不会听到“等一下-这是我高中的毕业照。”面孔失认症患者暗示了人类大脑里存在着一种专门用于辨认见过的人的机制，这种机制也被认为存在于别的动物甚至一些昆虫中。 |