Most people take for granted their ability to recognise faces. There is growing appreciation, however, that developmental prosopagnosia – a neurodevelopmental condition characterised by lifelong face recognition difficulties – is far more common than was once believed. As many as 1 in 50 people report face recognition problems severe enough to disrupt their daily lives, and around 1 in 200 meet conservative diagnostic criteria. In this lecture, Dr Richard Cook will describe how we identify cases of developmental prosopagnosia, discuss what is known about the origins of the condition, and consider its psychosocial consequences.
