People with prosopometamorphosia have a rare eye distortion that changes how they see faces. Its exact cause is unknown, but it is generally linked to neurological disorders like migraines, epilepsy, and abnormal findings on CT scans and MRIs of the head. It has also been associated with Epstein-Barr virus.

The British neurologist Macdonald Critchley coined the word prosopometamorphopsia to describe a type of metamorphopsia in which people see people’s faces or parts of faces distortedly. On CT studies and MRIs of the head, metamorphoses are often linked to diseases of the eyes or brain.

The disorder should not be confused with another facial recognition issue, prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness. In this more common disorder, people are affected in different ways. Some people might not tell the difference between strangers and people they do not know very well. Some people might not recognize their own faces or the faces of their family and friends. The actor, Brad Pitt, has admitted he has the disorder and frequently cannot recognize people he knows.

Different people have different symptoms that can change the size, shape, color, and placement of facial features. The problem can last days, weeks, or even years, another thing that can change about PMO.

A new study of one person gave us new information about this case of the problem. Faces do not look twisted to the 58-year-old man with PMO when they are seen on a screen or on paper, but they look “demonic” when he sees them in person. Why would it only happen when he’s with the person? It almost sounds like there’s an element of emotion involved. But his wasn’t the only case described in the professional literature because one woman with the disorder had an unusual variant of it.

In yet another description of a patient with the disorder, a right-handed 67-year-old woman with a history of coronary artery disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and diabetes mellitus described how she could see people’s faces tilted to the left. It seemed like the left eye on people’s faces was moving to the side and up when she saw them in person or watched TV pictures of people.

Looking at her own face in the mirror or at pictures of faces did not cause her to see any distortion. It was no problem for her to recognize faces, and only faces seemed twisted to her. Her neurological test came back normal. Additionally, her eye test did not reveal any significant findings. After two months of showing symptoms, a brain MRI revealed a brain obstruction or subacute infarct.

People with Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS) can have one of forty types of metamorphopsia. Any part of the face-processing network can be involved, from the occipital to the frontal lobe. The link between the brain’s two hemispheres plays a key role, which suggests it may be because of interhemispheric transfer. There are many reasons for this, such as a stroke, seizure, or migraine. It can change how the whole face is seen. But, curiously, up to 30% of teens have short episodes of AIWS symptoms, according to research. However, the disorder is elusive because of the lack of documentation.

What Are the Diagnostic Criteria for AIWS?

There is also disagreement among experts about the exact symptoms and criteria for the disorder. Currently, there are no agreed-upon criteria for AIWS, so physicians usually use their professional opinion to decide whether someone has it. Because of the lack of consensus, experts think that this condition is often not identified or is diagnosed wrong.

Exploring possible causation besides brain dysfunction, strange perceptual changes can happen in several other ways. It is possible for AIWS to be a sign of a mental illness or a side effect of many medications. We’ve seen this in elderly patients with dementia who are taking certain medications for allergies. Then there are medications like those found in cough medicines, montelukast, which is used to treat asthma, and topiramate, which is used to treat seizures. Brain tumors can also cause it.

Could the disorder be caused by a mental illness such as schizophrenia? Delusions and hallucinations are important signs of schizophrenia. However, visual hallucinations and illusions are less likely to be the first signs and are usually associated with substance abuse. Although psychiatrists are taught to ask about hallucinations, most of the time, visual illusions and hallucinations are signs of health problems because auditory hallucinations are more common. But the symptoms vary so much that this adds to the difficulty of diagnosis.

Currently, the professional literature lists 42 visible symptoms and 16 somesthetic and other nonvisual symptoms. These signs differ from hallucinations or illusions. Treatments vary according to how the symptoms are viewed and have been treated with various methods, including ECT.

Researchers now know that, while AIWS is rare, it may be under-reported because of the lack of diagnostic criteria. However, it appears to be a short-lived perceptual change in many cases.

Anyone experiencing any of these symptoms is advised to consult with a medical professional for evaluation rather than think it will simply go away by itself. Significant, treatable disorders could require medical attention.

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In a recent interview, Pitt vented his frustration. “So many people hate me because they think I’m disrespecting them…I took one year where I just said, This year, I’m just going to cop to it and say to people, ‘OK, where did we meet?’ But it just got worse. People were more offended. …You get this thing, like, ‘You’re being egotistical. You’re being conceited.’ But it’s a mystery to me, man. I can’t grasp a face, and yet I come from such a design/aesthetic point of view. I am going to get it tested.”

Different forms of prosopagnosia exist, and it is believed there are acquired and developmental forms. In the acquired form, the individual may have had lesions to specific portions of the brain on one or both sides. The developmental form remains an object of research interest since it’s unclear exactly how it might arise and what might cause it.

The defining feature of this disorder is a degraded sense of familiarity for the identity of the face, both for previously known faces and newly encountered ones. When someone with prosopagnosia fails to recognize that a face is familiar, they also have trouble putting a name to the face or recalling other information about the person until prompted by some other cue to the person’s identity.

Prosopagnosia has been reported with macular degeneration, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autism spectrum disorders, Turner syndrome, and schizophrenia.

In addition to prosopagnosia, other types of face-processing failures include impaired expression processing, impaired lip-reading, false familiarity of faces, and people-specific amnesia. Attempts in rehabilitation research studies appear to have gained a modest ability to improve this facility through several types of perceptual training.

How many types of human faces can most of us recognize? It has been estimated that the number is around 4000, but it is a very demanding form of perception, considering how the face can change with emotion, development, or aging.

The most obvious problem that this type of perception might cause is in social situations where the person has difficulty recalling who a person is, their name, or even where they may have met them. This can lead to awkward social interactions where some form of personal remediation might be required.

In other words, the person with the disorder might casually ask for a clue that might be meaningful in placing the face. This may seem to be a normal social interaction, but it is seeking behavior to help identify the face and the person in this individual’s life.

Persons with the disorder will generally be unwilling to reveal it freely and will attempt to monitor their lives so that it is not apparent or discovered. Obviously, there is an element of shame, a disability, and a sense of inferiority associated with it, which then brings on a level of social anxiety disorder in some. Avoidant behavior would be in the service of keeping this disorder secret because it isn’t something anyone would shout from the rooftops.

One in 50 persons may have the disorder, and it is estimated that in the UK, 1.5 million people have it and there is a center for diagnosing the disorder in the UK. In other parts of the world, they may use the 20-item Prospagnosia Index, a self-report instrument for developmental prosopagnosia. Another test is the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Interestingly, many persons with the disorder have never been tested because they never believed they had the disorder, ruling it out as a minor memory lapse. It is thought that there is a family connection to the condition, and first-degree relatives may be affected.

How might the deficit in perception found in prosopagnosia be corrected in treatment in rehabilitation? One route has been suggested in developmental types.

Various approaches have been tried, primarily of a learning type identifying different faces over weeks. Among the learning techniques that researchers incorporated for patients included mnemonic tricks to enhance recall and focus on facial features. However, those involved in the research have determined that much more work is needed to optimize the protocols, and some consideration should be given to pharmacologic agents that may address certain developmental aspects of the disorder.

The post Brad Pitt Believes He May Have an Inability to Recognize Faces, Prosopagnosia appeared first on Medika Life.

Social media is the ultimate equalizer. It gives a voice and a platform to anyone willing to engage. — Amy Jo Martin

Agreeing with Dickens when he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…” we look for hope in a time of darkness. Where can we find it as we wait? Technology may hold some hope.

As we mask up, researchers have a field day because of the plethora of factors to investigate. What about masks? Do they provide a means to hide our emotions on Facetime, create a new acceptance of people, or cause furtherance of backing off?

If we’re using social media and showing a portion of our faces, aren’t most of our faces and expressions covered by a mask? All good questions and researchers are probably on it.

Masks do affect how we perceive someone and what kind of interaction we will have. A mask removes our ability to perceive the entire face with all its characteristics — features we depend on to make our assessment of them. And masks cause problems not solely for us but for AI’s famed facial recognition algorithms.

Facial recognition software is particularly bad at recognizing African Americans and other ethnic minorities, women, and young people, often misidentifying or failing to identify them, disparately impacting certain groups. That’s when masks aren’t even in the equation. Add masks and it become more difficult.

Prior research on facial expressions and perception has depended on mouth curvature and similar facial movements, all hidden by masks. Our understanding of others, their intentions, and our communication are all affected by masks — and that can make us uncomfortable, anxious, or depressed; perhaps all three.

Most existing emotion-recognition systems analyze an individual’s facial expression…For example, if the corners of a person’s mouth are raised, the machine might rule that the person is in a good mood, whereas a wrinkled nose suggests anger or disgust.

One study did look at the effect of masks and made an assumption that waits to be tested.

Importantly, the inclusion of masks also led to a qualitative change in the way masked faces are perceived. In particular, holistic processing, the hallmark of face perception, was disrupted for faces with masks, as suggested by a reduced inversion effect.

The researchers believe that “…we provide novel evidence for quantitative and qualitative alterations in the processing of masked faces that could have significant effects on daily activities and social interactions.”

They didn’t pose an interesting question: how will being seen without a mask affect our newer social media relationships? Will it have any effect at all?

The Social Media Effect and Our Emotions

Every day, masks or not, the number of social media users increases. Every second, 11 people use social media for the first time.

In total, in North America, we spend an average of two hours, six minutes each day on social media, but this is an average, and many people may exceed that number of hours and minutes in their need to be rid of FOMO (fear of missing out). FOMO, in fact, is often a highly depression-evoking feeling.

The World Health Organization has proffered that the average global lifespan is 73.4 years. Based on that number of years and the amount of time we spend on social media, some estimate that we will spend six years and eight months using social media for whatever interests or ails us.

What’s the estimated world wide use of social media? “In 2020, there are an estimated 3.8 billion social media users worldwide, representing half the global population.”

But does social media affect us in positive or negative ways, or should we forget this entirely? We know it’s being used as therapist substitutes. So, there’s one potential benefit. If there aren’t therapists in an area, bots may be able to pick up the slack. Bots to the rescue, as it were.

Social Media Platform Use

Facebook and YouTube dominate this landscape, as notable majorities of U.S. adults use each of these sites. At the same time, younger Americans (especially those ages 18 to 24) stand out for embracing a variety of platforms and using them frequently. Some 78% of 18- to 24-year-olds use Snapchat, and a sizeable majority of these users (71%) visit the platform multiple times per day. Similarly, 71% of Americans in this age group now use Instagram and close to half (45%) are Twitter users. But those stats apply to 2018. What will it be in 2021?

Are there some solid reasons to use social media to help maintain your mental health, especially during trying times? It seems there are a number of them.

A study by a research team at Harvard University looked at the effects both positive and negative of social media and determined two things were important, the frequency and duration of use, and the number of contacts.

Social media, they found, was integrated into social and emotional connections, and there were three outcomes which they found salient; social well-being, positive mental health, and self-rated health. As a result of this research, their conclusion was that routine use of emotional connection with social media could have positive outcomes.

Social well-being was especially connected to three factors of age, education, and income. However, there was one intriguing finding. Social well-being and social media decrease with age.

…the study joins the few prior studies that have shown that beyond frequency and duration of use, (and) other aspects of use, such as type of use, should be considered in characterizing the link between social media use and health.

The Benefits and Potential Harm Need Further Exploration

There are benefits to being able to maintain contact to dispel loneliness, to play games to enhance skills and relieve boredom and to reach out for immediately help in a mental health crisis, that’s clear now to everyone or nearly everyone.

Social media allows anyone to join a group, engage in open communication on topics of interest, disseminate medical information, provide details on healthy lifestyles, recruit subjects for research, build communities, work for social change, and learn any subjects at any time of the day or night. It’s enormity is incredible.

But there are harms, too, and we need to balance both the positive and the negative and maintain some balance and recognize the problems.

We also know that social media can be used for not spreading truth but dangerous faux information, aka lies. This is how the virtual mask of social media plays into the hands of those with nefarious aims. A technology that was intended to connect the world and allow knowledge to be free for all, has proven to have a darker side.

Social media is a really awesome tool that can be used in so many positive ways. But, people NEED to consider the negative aspects to it as well. People should think about the consequences of the things they post or read on social media. Most importantly, we need to talk about these issues.

Don’t people hide behind the “masks” that social media provides? Do people really think it is without dire consequences if they publish highly personal information about themselves and others? We’ve received wake-up calls but not everyone is hearing them and the young and naive are vulnerable.

At this point, it would be premature to view the benefits of social media as outweighing the possible harms, when it is clear from the studies…that social media use can have negative effects on mental health symptoms, can potentially expose individuals to hurtful content and hostile interactions, and can result in serious consequences for daily life, including threats to employment and personal relationships. The harm and the benefits are real and we must accept both.

The question of age and gender, too, in addition to older adults, needs further exploration as noted in one study of 10–15 boys and girls.

High levels of social media interaction in early adolescence have implications for well-being in later adolescence, particularly for females. The lack of an association among males suggests other factors might be associated with their reduction in well-being with age. And this relationship in gender requires further exploration in order to address the factors involved in girls and well-being.

Social media is a great benefit, but it’s a “friend” we must carefully evaluate to parse out the good with the not-so-good. Use it, but beware not to let it abuse you as you do.

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