Mother of Two, NEVER Recognizes Her Own Reflection, OR Her Children’s Faces

11 Dec, 2015 by Scott McKay

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We’ve never heard of face blindness before, but apparently it’s a real thing, and one can imagine it has to be a fairly sad experience for people who suffer from it.

Like this woman, for example.

A woman suffers from a rare medical condition that leaves her unable to recognise her own face in the mirror.

KC Andrew, 60, suffers from prosopagnosia – also known as face-blindness – a neurological disorder which used to be considered rare, but specialists now believe affects up to 1 in 50.

Her condition is so severe that she has frequently mistaken her own reflection as another person and said ‘excuse me’, before realising she seeing herself in a mirror.

She has had the condition since birth and has learned to live with it by telling people she is simply ‘very bad with faces.’

The state government worker, from Portland, Oregon, said her first memory of her face blindness dates back to when her parents would take her to church on a Sunday as a little girl.

Her father Robert, 89, also has face blindness while, interestingly, her mother Joyce, 82, is the complete opposite as a ‘super recogniser.’

‘To me, it seems like a marvel that most people can just look at someone and know who they are without talking to them or studying their mannerisms closely,’ said Ms Andrews.

‘Mum would scold me for never saying, “Hi, Mrs Smith” and I’d go, “Who’s Mrs Smith?”

Apparently, prosopagnosia is defined by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders as follows…

Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder characterised by the inability to recognise people’s faces.

Also known as ‘face-blindness’, the severity of the condition depends on the degree of impairment a person suffers.

Some people with prosopagnosia may only struggle to recognise a familiar face, while others will be unable to discriminate between unknown faces, and in more severe cases sufferers cannot distinguish a face as being different from an object.

Some sufferers are unable to recognise their own faces.

The condition is not related to memory loss, impaired vision or learning disabilities.

It is thought to be the result of abnormalities, damage, or impairment in the right fusiform gyrus – a fold in the brain that appears to coordinate facial perception and memory.

Prosopagnosia can result from stroke, traumatic brain injury, or some neurodegenerative diseases.

In some cases the condition is congenital, and present at birth.

It appears to run in families, which makes it likely to be the result of a genetic mutation or deletion.

Some degree of prosopagnosia is often found in children with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome.

Treatment of the condition focuses on helping sufferers develop compensatory strategies, including relying on voice recognition, clothing, or unique physical attributes.