The face of a 58-year-old man with a rare medical condition may look normal on screen or on paper, but in real life it takes on a demonic quality. This patient has a special case of prosopagnosia (PMO), a condition in which a person's face appears distorted, reptilian, or inhuman.
new research published in lancet This case is unique in that the face appears demonic only if the person is physically present. The patient had been aware that his face was distorted for 31 months. At first it was painful for him, but he has now „got used to it,“ the newspaper said.
Because the face looks normal to him both on screen and in person, the research team had a unique opportunity to investigate how distortion manifests itself and create an accurate visualization of a „demonic“ face.
„Other studies on this condition have shown that patients with PMO are unable to assess how accurately their distorted visualization represents what they are seeing. Neither the visualization itself nor the face „The patient also perceives the distortion of the face because of the depiction,“ said Antonio Mello. Dartmouth College researcher and lead author of the study said in a university release. “Through this process, we were able to visualize the patient's real-time perception of facial distortions.”
For patients, the face they see face-to-face is disturbingly distorted. The eyes are elongated and angular, the nostrils are flared, and the lips extend outward to occupy the entire width of the face. A groove appears on the forehead, and the ears are bent in the shape of an elf and end with pointed tips. In mild cases, facial features simply look droopy, out of place, or smaller or larger than they are in reality.
In another case, published in lancet In 2014, a 52-year-old woman from the Netherlands reported:
Throughout my life, I have seen people's faces transform into dragon-like faces, and I have hallucinated similar faces many times a day. She was able to perceive and recognize real faces, but after a few minutes her face turned black and grew long, pointy ears and a protruding nose, with reptilian skin and bright yellow, green , showed large eyes that were blue, or red. How many times a day does she see similar dragon-like faces streaming toward her from walls, electrical outlets, or computer screens, both with and without face-like markings? I also saw it. And at night, I saw many dragon-like faces inside the house. dark.
According to Brad Duchene, senior author of the study and principal investigator at Dartmouth's Social Cognition Institute, people who suffer from PMO are often diagnosed with other illnesses, such as schizophrenia, and prescribed antipsychotic medication. It is said that this is often done.
„It's not uncommon for people with PMO to not tell others about their facial perception problems for fear that others will think their facial distortions are a sign of mental illness,“ Duchesne says. . „It's an issue that people often don't understand.“
The 58-year-old patient had a history of bipolar affective disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and had suffered a head injury at the age of 43, the researchers said. The patient had no vision problems and had a small round lesion in the left hippocampus, which the team concluded was a cyst.others are suffering Alice in Wonderland syndrome (A generic term for perceptual distortions) Brain lesions have also been reported. Encephalitis, migraine, and the use of psychotropic drugs have also been associated with this syndrome, but none were observed in recent patient cases.
To characterize facial distortion, researchers had men describe the perceived difference between the face of someone in the same room and a photo of that person. Because of his PMO, the face facing him was distorted and the face on the screen looked like a normal face.
PMO can last for some people in just a few days, while for others it can last for years. Although only 75 case reports of PMO have been published, According to researchers. Indeed, this is one of the rarer and more alarming sensory disorders, but knowing how it manifests means fewer patients will be misdiagnosed in the future.
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