Actress Shenaz Treasury Says She Has Prosopagnosia: What Do We Know About It?

Shenaz Treasury says she suffers from Prosopagnosia - a disorder that leads to an inability to recognize faces.

Actress Shenaz Treasury revealed in an Instagram post that she suffers from Prosopagnosia - a disorder that causes an inability to recognize faces.

The 41-year-old star of films like Delhi Belly and Ishq Vishk took to instagram to share her feelings on the diagnosis:

"Now, I understand why I've never been able to put faces together. It's a cognitive disorder. I always felt ashamed that I can't recognise faces. I recognise voices."

Just last week, actor Brad Pitt also revealed that he suffered from "undiagnosed face blindness" too.

So what is prosopagnoisa AKA face blindness? What causes face blindness? Could you be suffering from face blindness? Let's find out.

What is Progsopagnosia?

According to the National Library of Medicine, Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder that leads to an inability to recognize faces. This could be faces of people you know or people you've just met, but it goes well beyond just forgetting a face or two occasionally.

Also called face blindness, and facial/visual agnosia, prosopagnosia was first described in a paper 1947 by Joachim Bodamer.

The patients Bodamer used in his paper all exhibited signs of neurological damage which made it exceedingly difficult for them to recognize faces.

The word prosopagnosia comes from the Greek word 'prosopon', which means face and 'agnosia', which means a lack of knowledge.

According to the American Psychological Association, most people can recognize and remember over 5000 faces during their lifetime. Feeling like you can't remember a face or a name is very different from face blindness.

Remember, a problem becomes a disorder when it starts interfering with your daily function and routine.

What Are The Signs and Symptoms of Prosopagnosia?

If you suffer from prosopagnosia, you'll be unable to recognize and clearly differentiate people's faces.

People who suffer from prosopagnosia often report having trouble recollecting the faces of loved ones, friends, and work colleagues.

Instead of recognizing and recollecting faces from memory, patients will often use their other senses to discern face shapes, voices, and other factors to identify people easily.

Left unchecked or undiagnosed, this can lead to anxiety, depression, functional impairment, trouble holding down a job, social isolation, and other problems.

The disorder isn't only limited to people you know or interact with in real life. Some patients report being unable to watch movies or tv shows because they're unable to keep track of faces and characters.

What Causes Prosopagnosia?

The exact cause of prosopagnosia can vary from person to person, but some of the common reasons for the disorder include anomalies in neuron pathways that control memory and facial perception or deficits in the amygdala and temporal cortex.

Neurodegenerative diseases, traumatic brain injuries, and even strokes can result in face blindness.

In technical terms, prosopagnosia is believed to be a result of abnormalities in or damage to the right fusiform gyrus, a part of the brain that controls facial perception and memory.

However, the risk of prosopagnosia is also believed to be hereditary, with genetics playing a big role in congenital prosopagnosia. So, in simple terms, if you have a family member who's suffered from the disorder, you're more likely to experience it too.

Left unchecked it can lead to extreme social isolation and trouble adjusting to daily life.

What Is The Treatment For Prosopagnosia?

Unfortunately, no specific medicine or treatment procedure exists for prosopagnosia.

The only treatment is teaching patients to cope through alternative means to identify people. People who experienced facial agnosia because of a stroke or other illness can be retrained to recognize people through their voices, face shapes, and other features.