Have you ever seen someone that you're sure you recognise but whose face you just can't seem to place? It's a common enough occurrence, but for some people, problems with recognising faces are a part of their daily lives. They have a condition called prosopagnosia, or face blindness, which makes them incredibly bad at recognising faces, despite their normal eyesight, memory, intelligence, and ability to recognise other objects.
Prosopagnosia can be caused by accidents that damage parts of the brain like the fusiform gyrus - the core part of a broad network of regions involved in processing images of faces. That seems straightforward enough, but some people are born with the condition and their background is very different. They lack any obvious brain damage and indeed, brain-scanning studies havefound that the core face-processing areas of their brains are of normal size and show normal activity.
But these studies were looking ...
