tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post4074862452775058796..comments2023-06-25T07:54:12.252-04:00Comments on I married a communist: I'll make conversation while monitoring for verbal cluesHumanProjecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03579380219478093167noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post-15512167321306515862008-10-25T12:10:00.000-04:002008-10-25T12:10:00.000-04:00Very interesting. Closed head trauma is a notable ...Very interesting. Closed head trauma is a notable cause of prosopagnosia, perhaps the most common. The very subtle personality traits you describe are also seen after CHI, and can extend to other areas as well... <BR/>A plain CT would show if there was some damaage- but what to do with such knowledge? You are clearly happy and bright.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post-31729978762099534632008-10-25T11:35:00.000-04:002008-10-25T11:35:00.000-04:00Dan,Ha ha, thanks for the chuckle. Since I am an ...Dan,<BR/>Ha ha, thanks for the chuckle. <BR/><BR/>Since I am an atheist, the pattern-making centers of my brain aren't drawn to images of that particular folk hero. <BR/><BR/>But keep the prosopagnosia humor coming! There must be a website on this somewhere.... SNL should do a skit; like the old Pat routine.HumanProjecthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03579380219478093167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post-39157674667625132502008-10-25T07:40:00.000-04:002008-10-25T07:40:00.000-04:00And now for the bright side of prosopagnosia: you'...And now for the bright side of prosopagnosia: you'll never turn to god because you saw Jesus on a slice of toast.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01781132745363795745noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post-52599193827337861302008-10-25T00:34:00.000-04:002008-10-25T00:34:00.000-04:00Dear Anonymous,I was in a serious motor vehicle ac...Dear Anonymous,<BR/><BR/>I was in a serious motor vehicle accident at age 12 and spent 3 months in the hospital with multiple fractures; but a bed-side neurological exam in the days immediately afterward led to the conclusion of no neurological problems. It was 1975 and no brain scan or head x-ray was conducted. <BR/><BR/>About 5 years ago I had a long talk with my mother about whether I could have suffered brain injury during the 1975 accident that affected my personality in subtle ways; she maintains she never saw any post-accident difference. I definitely have some personal eccentricities but I've just had to accept these as my personality. The eccentricities are things like: I'm hyper-rational, a bit literal minded, don't feel much need to conform to social rules that don't make sense to me, crave intellectual stimulation, not good at social chit-chat, low tolerance for being bored, novelty-oriented, etc. These sound like normal personality variation, not head injury.<BR/><BR/>Its true that I don't remember being bad at face recognition as a child; my first strong anecdote of not recognizing someone is an incident at 17.<BR/><BR/>I've been thinking about writing a blog entry about the 1975 accident because I'm a biker and the old accident was a biking accident but I have amnesia for the accident itself and most of two weeks following the accident<BR/><BR/>But could closed-head injury cause the mild prosopagnosia I have? Although I'm a university professor and researchers in my dept do fMRI research I have never had a scan myself.<BR/><BR/>What do you think?HumanProjecthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03579380219478093167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post-12713887156009391702008-10-24T12:43:00.000-04:002008-10-24T12:43:00.000-04:00Did you ever have head trauma?Did you ever have head trauma?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post-5768688353417894182008-09-25T19:35:00.000-04:002008-09-25T19:35:00.000-04:00I did shoot you a email, but since for all I know ...I did shoot you a email, but since for all I know it got spammed, or was incoherent (I was holding my eyes open as I was writing it), here is the abridged version:<BR/><BR/>1. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear - I meant that the diagnosis does not affect my life. I know that prosopagnosia has, although I do think the degree is highly arguable.<BR/><BR/>2. I felt some relief at first, but I've effectively been told:<BR/> that a) I've been screwed up my whole life, b) I have a "disorder," which is a label I'm not excited about, and c) there's no cure.<BR/><BR/>3. There is no three, I just didn't think I could have a list with only two items.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post-4618437070919231522008-09-23T09:31:00.000-04:002008-09-23T09:31:00.000-04:00Dear anonymous,Why not go ahead and do the VA face...Dear anonymous,<BR/><BR/>Why not go ahead and do the VA face training study since the time commitment is actually pretty modest, as you noted (and what you say is probably the correct time, I probably had the study duration wrong due to using my brain cells to put on my pants).<BR/><BR/>It does seem like the you and I have similar profiles. <BR/><BR/>But what about this:<BR/><BR/> "This whole experience has me a little bit on edge. It has no real impact on my life, but there's something unsettling about going from weird to classifiably weird."<BR/><BR/>Learning one has a diagnosis sometimes brings an element of relief, as in: "I always knew there was something not quite right, and now the experts have confirmed my intuition, so rather than being uncertain, at least I have a label and can take action" etc.<BR/><BR/>But I also wonder why you feel having prosopagnosia has no impact on your life -- what about not recognizing people and all that?<BR/><BR/>BTW, go ahead and email me (see Profile) if that is more convenient for you.HumanProjecthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03579380219478093167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post-37440918025181402112008-09-22T17:57:00.000-04:002008-09-22T17:57:00.000-04:00Interesting - he told me it was only 2-3 weeks, an...Interesting - he told me it was only 2-3 weeks, and seemed to think they'd had pretty good success with it so far. <BR/><BR/>I'm also a little nervous about the time commitment. I'm in a position which often barely allows me enough time or brain cells left to put my pants on in the morning. Curiosity always gets the better of me though, so I'd like to at least attempt it. When I discussed my time constraints with him, he didn't seem to think it was huge deal if I fell out of the study by not completing it. I could be wrong, but I got the impression he's having a tough time getting enough people together.<BR/><BR/>I also scored poorly on the CFPT, and was normal on the same four initial tests. I also pointed out the skin tone and fat-thin issue, after which I was also given a version of the PFPB where the faces had been made black and white, and he'd cut them out to make them the same shape.<BR/><BR/>This whole experience has me a little bit on edge. It has no real impact on my life, but there's something unsettling about going from weird to classifiably weird.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post-23829045864200863392008-09-22T11:14:00.000-04:002008-09-22T11:14:00.000-04:00The researcher who tested me sees the next step as...The researcher who tested me sees the next step as a training program. I would take home a laptop and spent 20-30 minutes per day repeatedly doing a face discrimination task which focuses not on the features, but on the distance between the features.<BR/><BR/>The idea behind this training is that the prosopagnosic is forced to focus on configuration of the whole face. One of my students worked as a research assistant in this lab last year and says that he did the training, and even though he has normal face perception, the training moved him into the superior range on tasks like the Cambridge Face Perception task.<BR/><BR/>The drawback of the training is: not everyone benefits from the training; and the training is long duration (daily for at least a month). So its a big commitment. I'm worried I would start the training and then get too busy and start missing days, which would screw up their protocol.HumanProjecthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03579380219478093167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2882378175886697699.post-71729705745607975122008-09-21T23:28:00.000-04:002008-09-21T23:28:00.000-04:00I'm curious what happened next - only because I've...I'm curious what happened next - only because I've been for the same tests. No doubt with the same researcher.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com