Minneapolis researcher plans treatment program for kids with face blindness

Minneapolis researchers say face blindness — the inability to recognize faces — may affect 1-2 percent of the population, a rate similar to autism. The condition, known to scientists as prosopagnosia, can isolate sufferers, keeping them from recognizing colleagues and even family. But a University of Minnesota researcher who believes children with prosopagnosia are often misdiagnosed says he’s planning a program to help.

Albert Yonas, Ph.D.

Dr. Al Yonas, who leads a lab at the university’s Institute of Child Development, discussed his plans to launch a program to intervene early in the life of those suffering with the condition.

“The underlying idea is that if we’re reaching these children earlier than adults are being treated, we’re hoping we’re going to see more improvement than we’re seeing in research on adults,” said Yonas in an interview posted in December. He declined to say when the treatment center would open.

According to the institute’s website, until recently most of the research has focused on adults. Another barrier to diagnosis, Yonas says, is a lack of awareness.

But science may be getting help from literature on the latter challenge. Two critically acclaimed books in late 2010 shine the spotlight on the disorder. Oliver Sacks, the author of “Awakenings,” which inspired the movie, released a book called “The Mind’s Eye in October.” It chronicles a series of creative people adapting to visual disabilities, including face blindness. Sacks, a neurologist at the Columbia University Medical Center, suffers with prosopagnosia.

Another writer impacted by the condition, Heather Sellers, released her memoir, “You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Blindness, and Forgiveness,” in October. The book discusses her combined struggles with severe prosopagnosia along with her dysfunctional family, including a mother with schizophrenia.

Sellers, a writer and poet teaching at Hope College in Holland, Mich., often warns new students that she will not be able to recognize them. She agrees with Yonas that diagnosis is a major challenge, since no single test can guarantee a perfect appraisal. Diagnosed as an adult, she recalls the challenges of recognizing her condition.

“It’s much harder to present your problem if you’ve had prosopagnosia your whole life, as I have,” Sellers said in the Dec. 1 post on her blog for Psychology Today. “I simply didn’t know faces could be recognized in any special way.”

Yonas and the researchers assisting him in his lab have developed several tests for prosopagnosia. In the process, they have collected data from about 200 control subjects, largely children in St. Paul and Minneapolis.