A stunning and utterly brilliant and intuitive (is that enough
superlatives?) explanation of prosopagnosia / "face blindness" for
those who haven't got it and can't imagine how anyone could have, or
how it manifests itself.

        http://www.prosopagnosia.com/main/stones/index.asp

This explains a number of things ... :-).
It seems that "face recognition" is a specific function built into our
brains, that takes
all the available information and processes it and produces a link to
other information related to individuals. The specific brain area can
be affected or damaged or perhaps just develop in such a way that it
functions less well in some people than others.

The fact that face recognition, quite distinct from seeing faces and
recognising or even describing features thereon, is demonstrated by
the fact that traumatic brain damage in the appropriate area can lead
to sudden complete loss of face recognition capability while all other
capabilities are unaffected.



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