Paradox Puree ([info]paradox_puree) wrote in [info]faceblind,

Prosopagnosia Research

I recently went to visit Dr. Nathan Witthoft, an individual working in the Stanford Vision and Perception Neuroscience Lab, who is doing research on individuals that have prosopagnosia. I had a very good time speaking with him and taking part in his tests. It was really neat to actually have someone test my facial perception and show me how I fared compared with people that are more neurotypical. I'm really curious to see what he comes up with in his research.

Anyways, he's looking for more volunteers to come in and take some of his tests, so I thought I'd pass along the information, as he is a nice guy doing legit research in this field.

Here's a description of what he's doing that he sent me:
" I work in a visual neuroscience lab that studies high level vision using psychophysics and fMRI. We have an ongoing project studying people with congenital prosopagnosia. Generally speaking people with CP have normal vision and normal cognition but extraordinary difficulty recognizing people from their faces. This difficulty is lifelong, though it does take some people a while to realize that there face recognition is not as good as most other people. The experiments are a number of psychophysical tasks which we use to try to understand the nature of the problem and also several brain imaging experiments including fMRI and DTI (mapping the white matter pathways in the brain). We do pay for subjects' time, though the amount is limited by the IRB, generally 15$/hour for the behavioral studies and 30$/hour for the imaging. Let me know if the description sounds like you and you are interested in participating. If you are not sure if you fall into this group or not, we have our own set of tests that are fairly good at
picking out people with real difficulties."

The lab's website is here: http://vpnl.stanford.edu/

If you have any interest in working with him, his email address is witthoft@stanford.edu. I think he's looking for locals, since he wants people to come into his office to do the tests, but if you know anyone that might be interested, let them know.

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  • 9 comments

[info]reikimaster

July 24 2009, 21:30:38 UTC 2 years ago

please tell me he's not having you look at pictures then making assessments based on that.

[info]paradox_puree

July 24 2009, 21:55:38 UTC 2 years ago

Um... yes... why?

[info]reikimaster

July 25 2009, 01:12:17 UTC 2 years ago

because he's not testing for prosopagnosia. The part of the brain that recognizes faces (fusiform gyrus) is different than the part that recognizes two dimensional objects, even if they are pictures of faces. he didnt do his homework. People who have prosopagnosia can do fantastic on those type of tests. it's just no indication of if you are faceblind (i mean, I know YOU are) or how severe it is in you.
He should test using real people, ideally or movies/video at minimum. Otherwise his test results are invalid.
He should contact Brad Duchaine, a neuroscientist at University College in London who has done extensive research on faceblindness.
i can pass those tests with flying colors but cannot recognize my own husband. sometimes even when he's standing in our house. (that was a fun moment. ugh)

[info]baerana

July 26 2009, 01:09:17 UTC 2 years ago

I'm not 100% sure I'm getting your point. You know, there are degrees of face blindness. I don't and never have been able to recognize people from photos. Sketches of people are even worse - unless you say "do you know who this person is?" I don't even know it's a sketch of a person, it just seems abstract. I know a guy with face blindness who doesn't know if something is a person or a statue or a poster until it moves. I'm thankful mine isn't THAT bad. I don't recognize myself in the mirror. And through I've trained myself extensively to recognize the way people carry themselves, body language they use, voices, style of clothing they generally wear, I do still sometimes not recognize the man I've lived with 11 years. He's very good about it, though, he won't enter my personal space if he realizes I haven't recognizes him, he'll say "hi, it's me" and he also says "hey Joe (or whoever)" when we first see any friend. It's SUCH a relief to have someone like that finally. All previous partners really thought I just wasn't trying hard enough and wouldn't make an effort to help me. (OTOH, he would leave the house without pants if I didn't help him, so it evens out )

[info]reikimaster

July 26 2009, 17:00:21 UTC 2 years ago

LOL glad you're there to keep him dressed!

in short, what I'm saying is that extensive research has found that not being able to recognize people from photos is not necessarily indicative of faceblindness.

[info]paradox_puree

July 26 2009, 02:05:02 UTC 2 years ago

I can pass the "recognize this photo" test with flying colors. But he did more than that. He'd show a picture of a person and then show that person's face from different angles and ask if you ould recognize them. I failed that test miserably, while non-prosopagnosia people seem to pass it quite well...

[info]songmonk

July 24 2009, 23:56:37 UTC 2 years ago

I am curious to know what you are getting at.

[info]baerana

July 26 2009, 01:12:26 UTC 2 years ago

how many hours are you doing? basically, how much are you making? I hate to say it that way, but I'd love to help, and do go to the San Fransisco area from time to time. But to do this, I'd have to stay, it sounds like, at least a couple of extra days, so I'd have to know this would at least pay for a couple of extra hotel room nights. (not generally cheap in the bay area )

if you don't feel comfortable answering publicly, privately messaging me is ok

[info]xshardsx

November 29 2009, 18:16:00 UTC 2 years ago

Ha. There's an almost identical study going on at the University of Toronto here.
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