Beholding face

What if you could describe your beloved’s earlobes, hair, nose, eyes in delicate detail but never really see her face? What if you could not recognize anyone’s face at all, not even your own? In his bestselling book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales” (Perennial Library, 1987), Oliver Sacks, a renowned neurologist and one of the best science writers I have read, wrote about his patient named Dr. P who did just that. In fact, after his examination by Dr. Sacks, Dr. P kept on lifting his wife’s head thinking it was his hat (thus, the title of Sack’s book.)

Most of us unconsciously luxuriate in our ability to recognize faces that we never really give a thought to the complexity required for us not just to see a face, but to recognize it.  Oliver Sacks’ encounter with Dr. P made me think about what we really do when we see a face, particularly one we are closely connected to emotionally. Dr. P had a tumor that was taking over the parts of his brain that if they were intact, enabled him to enter a visual world and make it his own with all the meaning and drama attached to it. But because of the tumor, he could no longer see his wife’s face and even mistook it for a hat. When shown photos, he was able to recognize only two personalities with characteristic patterns on their faces like Einstein with his moustache and hair and his brother who had “square jaw and big teeth” but he did not recognize any of their family and friends in the photos displayed in their home, not even of himself. There did not seem to be any of that silken feeling that touches us when we come across old photos of dear ones, but he could describe so technically the parts of the scenes in the images. He could see parts of a scene, including parts of a face but as Oliver Sacks so aptly put it, “he did not behold it.” Dr. P could not behold a face. I can think of no other inability that approaches this kind of thievery. Imagine losing the ability to behold a face and recognize and engage the persona which gives life to that face.

In another case by Dr. V.S. Ramachandran which he wrote about in his book “Phantoms in the Brain” (written with Sandra Blakeslee, Quill, 1998) he wrote of Arthur who, after a major accident damaging his brain, insisted that his parents were “impostors” when he sees them but could perfectly recognize them when he hears them. He sees the faces of his parents but the connections to the emotional parts of his brain which would assure him that these are the faces he loves and trust are gone. That breaks his parents’ hearts and causes Arthur much confusion.

Prosopagnosia or face blindness is the condition where you are unable to recognize faces. This could be due to brain damage caused by an accident or a disease like a brain tumor. But this condition could also be in your genes, and a recent study has provided evidence for it. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA published online last Feb. 22, it is entitled “Human face recognition ability is specific and highly heritable” by Jeremy B. Wilmer and his colleagues.” They have suspected that the ability to recognize faces is genetic and not largely from the experiencing faces and put it to the test by having two kinds of twins — identical (same DNA) and fraternal twins (not exactly the same DNA). The performance of the identical twins in the tests was higher than that of the fraternal twins, suggesting that “face recognition” depends a lot on DNA. The study also further strengthened evidence that “face recognition” is separate from other abilities such as visual or spatial reasoning.

The researchers in the PNAS study as well as those who reviewed it agreed that the inability to recognize a face pose serious difficulties for the patient and those around them because these patients are known to have “heightened anxiety, chronic stress, feelings of inadequacy, social interaction and occupational difficulties, and avoidance of social situations.” This gives you an idea of what recognizing a face can do to your nerves — it could ease anxiety and make you maneuver life within the constant gaze of people you love and trust. Conversely, it also aids you in recognizing the faces and expressions you need to avoid to protect yourself.

This should give us a new appreciation for what happens to us when we encounter a face we know. We should remember that when we see our beloved, we are not just seeing a face but beholding it too.

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