Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Journal #3

Professor Mark Berg
(History & Systems)
Chapter 14
From this chapter I chose to focus on Prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is a neurological condition in which an individual is unable to recognize familiar faces. This condition can be genetic but can also appear in people who have complications in the right fusiform gyrus. The right fusiform gyrus is a fold in the brain that helps coordinate/control facial perception and memory neural systems. Other things that can cause prosopagnosia are strokes, TBI (traumatic brain injury), and specific neurodegenerative diseases. Symptoms of this condition can be being withdrawn while in public places, having difficulty making friends, and being withdrawn at school but confident at home. There are no cures for this condition but individuals can develop new ways  to help them remember faces. Cues is a great way to help individuals with prosopagnosia identify familiar faces. There are many people in the world who have this condition and live life without knowing it. This condition can be proven to make life difficult but life is manageable.

Elements of thought:
My Point of view is that this is extremely fascinating from a medical perspective. The amount of faces an individual without this condition processes is large. One day not having the ability to recognize the face of a loved one is terrifying. The only difference between this and dementia (which is an umbrella term for memory loss conditions) is that the emotional connection does not dissipate with the facial recognition.
Assumptions are that people with this condition are unable to lead a normal life. That is in fact not true. As I stated previously, there are many people in the world who have this condition and never know or seek medical attention for it. A life with this condition is manageable. 
The Purpose is to educate individuals on perception, how it affects people, and the abnormalities of the brain. 

**These pictures below are to help show this condition within the brain**

This is to show the difference in the right fusiform gyrus of a person with prosopagnosia and a person without it. 

This image is an individual's brain after an ischemic stroke

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