The neurological disorder that prevents you from recognizing faces, how is this possible? What would it look like?
In: Biology
If you look at a bunch of monkeys, or sparrows, they probably all look alike. You might be able to recognize a few of them due to distinctive features, but otherwise they don’t look obviously different in the way humans do. This isn’t actually because humans’ faces are more distinct, you just learned (when you were an infant!) to pay more attention to human faces.
In fact, very young babies (before they’ve learned to focus on just human faces) can tell monkey faces apart better than adult humans can.
So for a person with prosopagnosia, it’s probably like looking at a bunch of crows, and they all pretty much look alike. The same phenomenon occurs in humans who didn’t have any exposure to certain ethnic groups while growing up.. it’s harder to tell the faces of people with those facial features apart.
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