Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is a neurological condition in which an individual has difficulty recognizing familiar faces. While they may see the individual features of a face, the ability to recognize and identify the face as a whole is impaired. This can cause significant social problems, as recognizing people is a crucial part of human interaction. Prosopagnosia is a cognitive disorder which can also impact the ability to navigate familiar environments, as well as affect the ability to follow television plot lines and identify characters.
While the exact cause of prosopagnosia is not known, researchers believe that it is likely due to a problem with the brain’s ability to process and store information about faces. People with autism are two to three times more likely to have prosopagnosia than the general population, and research has also suggested that it may be linked to damage to specific brain regions, such as the fusiform gyrus.
Recently, there have been reports of individuals developing face blindness as a symptom of long COVID. While it is not yet clear how common this is, a study by Dartmouth College researchers found that many patients with long COVID reported changes in facial recognition. One patient, known as Annie (a pseudonym to protect her privacy), had normal facial recognition before being diagnosed with COVID-19 in March 2020. However, after a few days of recovery, she relapsed and began experiencing symptoms of face blindness.
Annie describes her experience of trying to remember a face as being like trying to replicate a Chinese character after one viewing when you’re unfamiliar with the language. Previously, she could work on a portrait and only need to look at her subject once every 15 to 30 minutes, but now she has to refer back constantly. In addition to her facial recognition problems, Annie has also been experiencing difficulty navigating familiar environments, having to rely on Google map pins to relocate her car.
It is also worth mentioning that visual agnosia can manifest differently in different people, and it is possible for individuals to have mild symptoms that do not significantly impact their daily lives.
Tests conducted by neuropsychologists at Dartmouth College confirmed that Annie’s trouble with object recognition deficit is due to specific face memory defects and not wider issues. However, she has also been experiencing other long COVID symptoms including fatigue, concentration problems, brain fog, balance issues, and migraines. Due to insurance issues, she has not undergone an MRI, so a stroke cannot be excluded as the cause of her symptoms, especially given the evidence of an increased risk of stroke with COVID-19.
This case study highlights the selective and severe problems that COVID-19 can cause in some individuals, including neurological problems such as prosopagnosia or facial recognition impairment. The majority of people with long COVID surveyed by the researchers reported noticeable neurological difficulties, indicating that these problems are not limited to a minority of severe cases. Physicians and healthcare professionals need to be aware of these problems and monitor patients for neurological symptoms in addition to the more commonly known symptoms of COVID-19.
