Three things to know about Brad Pitt disease

A few days ago, American actor Brad Pitt revealed that he suffers from facial recognition disorder. But what does that mean?

What is prosopagnosia?

“This means an inability to recognize faces. When your eyes receive images, this signal is sent to the brain in various structures, including the occipital lobe. This is how the images are analyzed,” explained Dee.^R Julian J. Kavanagh.

Who can be bothered with that?

“This facial recognition ability is not unique to humans. Some animals also have this ability. There are humans who are born without this ability. There are others who have lost this ability due to a tumor, autoimmune disease or stroke,” the doctor explained.

Brad Pitt is one of those people who never had this ability.

“But we don’t know to what extent. The experience he shared was that during Hollywood events, he got a bit of a reputation for being a snob and not interested in other people, but in reality, he was very difficult to identify with,” he continued.

How many people live with this?

“What’s remarkable is that people born like him don’t necessarily realize it. So it’s hard to know how many people suffer from it. We have more data on people who have lost the ability, but it’s still very rare,” said Mr Cavanagh.