A World Without Faces

In the article Forgetting Faces by Thomas Grueter, prosopagnosia is discussed in detail with relation to the brain; how certain damaged areas in the brain could result in this rare condition. The author himself suffers from this condition and this article accounts for his journey from discovering face blindness in himself to conducting extensive surveys and researches with hopes to shed more light to this unique condition. Meanwhile, the article The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat relates the experience of Dr. Sacks with a musically talented man who suffers from prosopagnosia. It details the prosopagnosic patient’s visual process and provides much insight into how people who suffer from a disorder of face perception go about their daily lives.

Prosopagnosia, a condition where a person’s ability to recognize faces is impaired is surprisingly unheard of even till this very day. It is shocking to learn that in the United States alone, six million people could be suffering from this devastating condition and yet do not realize it. Strange yet seemingly plausible. Prosopagnosia affects people’s lives to quite a significant level. Due to their inability to recognize faces at an instant, they are often embarrassed, resulting in a low self-esteem and fear of being out in the public. Prosopagnosics find it hard to cope with changes in their surroundings and therefore are indirectly forced to live a monotonous routine life. Adults have difficulty at work and a new environment frustrates them. Young kids tend to be clingier to their parents and may take a significant amount of time to learn in school. This disrupts their childhood on many levels as they could not identify faces with their personal feelings and may be left feeling confused. People with prosopagnosia might also feel slight emotional blindness due to their inability to detect changes in facial expressions which we often use to convey our emotions. In the second article, a young man of 32 who suffers from this condition had difficulties recognizing faces of his family members and even himself. However, from another perspective people with this condition learn to live with it and though their life may seem to revolve around a huge bubble of confusion, things turn out better and their lives become not too negatively affected on a daily basis as they grow up and become familiar with everything.

Those who are afflicted with prosopagnosia form their own personal ways and develop a unique pattern to recognize faces. Some might try their best to remember distinct facial features such as a prominent facial mole or excessive facial hair. They learn over time to identify a person from their hair; whether it is long or short and how they wear it. Prosopagnosics can recognize a person with long hair easily because it is not frequently changed but might see that person as a different individual if she were to pull her hair back into a ponytail. Others might learn to recognize a person by listening to their voice or observing their movements. When they live within a confined space with the same few people or go to a school where seats are all assigned after a certain period, eventually they learn to pick up things like where a person sits or how they sound like when they speak. A few others take special note on tiny details like how their teeth look like, the kind of shoes they wear and in the case of Macrae’s patient, by identifying conspicuous clothing on a person like a large hat. This could work relatively well as prosopagnosics have no difficulty recognizing abstract shapes or schematic diagrams.

If I were to put myself in the lives of millions of prosopagnosics I would feel somewhat crippled. I say this because I am not born with the condition but rather obtained it through a head trauma. Therefore having prosopagnosia will definitely feel strange to me. I will feel confused most of the time because not having the ability to recognize myself immediately when I stand in front of a mirror is just simply devastating. Because I have to spend a significant amount of time learning to identify faces and constantly deal with that issue everywhere I go, I can see myself unable to become adept at receiving emotions and might not even pick up some emotions. Facial expressions play an important role in communicating and if I am unable to differentiate them, I will find it hard to relate with people as I may not enjoy the emotions they convey. A huge portion of our lives is dedicated to emotions and not being able to enjoy emotions could result in withdrawal from social and personal happenings in my life. In addition to that, the inability to recognize my loved ones as well as myself initially may affect me on many levels which eventually lead to mild depression.

Prosopagnosia may cause my psychological health to deteriorate due to constant mistakes I make when meeting people, especially in public areas where a large crowd becomes a challenge to identify with. Humiliation and embarrassments from time to time will absolutely make me feel inferior to others and I will definitely fear meeting new people or even having a different lifestyle. This might affect me psychologically by making me become a less confident person, my professional life may not reach its highest potential and all these factors summed up together could undoubtedly turn my whole life into a huge mistake. I will always feel incomplete. A fish out of water is what I will be if I were to be afflicted with prosopagnosia.

Walking On All Fours

The short video we watched in class discussed about ‘The Family That Walks On All Fours’ and included scientists’ opinions regarding that subject matter. Throughout the video we also witnessed the interviews conducted with the parents of the family members that walked on their feet and hands. From the short clip, we learned that a Muslim family in Turkey might offer the world a great revelation about the evolution of homo sapiens. A few family members have a unique ability to move from one place to another using both their hands and feet. It would have never crossed our minds that this is occurring today but this video proved us wrong.

The shocking documentary on the family that walks on all fours was very intriguing and many scientists came up with their own thoughts about this rare occurrence. One of the many theories is the cross marriage factor. The parents of the five family members who walked on all fours are apparently cousins. According to one of the scientists, cross marriage increases risk of gene mutations in their offspring because most of us do have harmful mutations in our genes. However, when the chromosomes of a father and a mother combine, the normal gene would pair up with the mutated gene resulting in a normal set of gene in their children. Therefore, in this family’s case, the parents being cousins are genetically related to each other and would thus share similar gene mutations. When the two cousins marry and have kids, it could possibly result in the mutation we witness in their five children. This gene mutation in them resulted in ancient traits reappearing and could be referred as reverse evolution where they return to the primitive state of locomotion of our ancestors.

Another theory concerns brain damage. It is said that something could have happened during the mother’s pregnancy that affects the way the child’s brain develop. The five family members; four daughters and one son were brought to the hospital for a brain scan. The brain scans revealed that one of the five family members has a significant decrease in size of cerebellum, one part of the brain which is responsible for movement and balance. The doctor also stated that due to the small size of cerebellum, it is expected that the family member would walk with feet wide apart; pointing towards opposite directions and could also experience difficulty with balance and to walk steadily.

One of the scientists also theorized that the role of environment might influence the current state of the five family members. The environment in which they grew up and their culture have a lasting impact to their existing condition. Perhaps the parents did not have the knowledge to bring these children to the hospital for treatment when they were younger or it may not have occurred to them that it may be cured as their faith emphasized acceptance and treating it as a test from God.

Scientists also think that this unique occurrence might stem from their family life. The mother of the five children had nineteen children; several of them passed away. It was also noted that the mother of the children had seven children in the time frame of five years. There might be insufficient time to care for each child and it could be that her frequent pregnancies resulted in unhealthy children as the MRI brain scans and tests done showed that the children did suffer from brain damage and have limited intelligence.

Among the five of the family member who have this unique ability to revert to quadrupedalism, one of the daughters, Sofia had to deal with psychological issues. Often times, she would have depression symptoms, withdrawing herself from her family. Apart from that another family member showed challenges psychologically too. Due to his inability to walk upright, Hussein would release his frustrations by shouting loudly and banging outside his house.

Their inability to walk upright like the rest of us resulted in many social consequences for these five people. They could not live independently as they require help at times due to their limited intelligence and unique locomotion. The daughters are unlikely to get married. One of the girls who walked on all fours was noted saying that she would really love to be able to walk upright so she could go to the dances and meet her husband.

The family that walks on all fours was not welcomed in the community. The people in the little village were not supportive and understanding of them at all. They told the family that they have been cursed. As a result, the father decided to build their house further away from the rest of the community. They were outcast and the village people offered no help at all when there was no water supply. The family is looked down upon and the father said he would give up anything including the clothes on his back to get his five children to walk upright, normally.

In the United States, as of today I have yet to witness a situation in which a person is discriminated or treated differently because of their unique abilities. I believe that generally the society is more tolerant and accepting of differences because that is what shaped and molded the United States in the first place. Differences between you and me.

Ethics

The article published in New York Times by Bayard Webster concerns Vivisection, debating whether it should be abolished or otherwise. Throughout the article, he revealed the unnecessary torture animals experience, discussed the alternatives to Vivisection and highlighting thoughts by scientists on why Vivisection could not be abolished despite the available alternatives. The article which was first published in Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1-14, now reproduced in an internet resource by Christopher D. Green relates the use of human in psychological experimentation to an experiment conducted by John B. Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner in 1920. The experimental work, also known as ‘Little Albert’ experiment involved subjecting Albert; only 9 months of age to a series of test in order to prove whether (a) responses or rather fear can be conditioned, (b) conditioned emotional response for one object is transferable to another and (c) the effect of time on conditioned emotional responses.

In accordance to our principles of professional conduct, I believe using humans and animals in psychological experimentations is morally unacceptable. Each organism, human or nonhuman has a basic right. A right to live a healthy, progressive life. Who are we to rob them off their rights? Do we have the right to inflict such pain, stress and fear on animals for the benefit of mankind? We cannot plainly assume it is alright to have complete authority over animals just because we are superior in some ways. To subject them to mental, emotional and physical torture based on the sole reason that they are animals; defenseless creatures, is undoubtedly unethical. To justify animal testing and Vivisection by pointing towards the advancement of human life does not make it morally correct to do so either.

We have all benefited from animal experimentations from the discovery of blood pressure using horses to the more recent therapies; chemotherapy, blood transfusion and etc. One experiment, the Draize test as described by Webster, involved putting cosmetics or chemicals in rabbits’ eye to note the amount of damage caused. Surely, there is an alternative to this. Instead of testing on white albino rabbits, chemicals could be tested on donated retinas or artificial skin that scientists have invented instead. Dr. Miller defended Vivisection and animal testing by revealing that animals among themselves exploit each other too. In this case, it could be rebutted that it is a natural occurrence among animals to ensure survival and to maintain the ecological balance of our biological ecosystem. Unlike Vivisection and other animal experimentation, these animals who are killed by one another do not suffer from emotional distress and physical injuries for a measureable period of time because they are usually eaten the instant they are captured. Animal testing is unethical but important. While we cannot completely abolish use of animals in experiments at this point yet, we can certainly improve animal conditions and experimental techniques.

Meanwhile, I believe the use of human as subjects in psychological experimentations is also unsurprisingly, not ethical. In the case of Albert who was conditioned to fear a white rat whose fear later transferred on to other furry objects, Watson did not find ways to recondition Albert after the tests were conducted. This is unethical because we do not know of the effects caused, whether Albert suffered later in his childhood from a phobia of furry objects is unknown. Also, when the experiment was conducted, Albert was only about nine months of age. Due to Albert’s young age, the ‘Little Albert’ experiment today would be considered unethical by the American Psychological Association and is therefore banned. The ethical issue concerning this experiment also stems from the fact that Watson did not have the consent from Albert’s mother to do so. She was not informed of it and is unaware of the tests performed on her child. It is also not ethical because Albert was unaware that he was being intentionally frightened as part of the experiment. As a person, he should have every right to decline and yet he was deprived of that. Therefore using Watson’s experiment as an example, I would conclude that in general using human in psychological experimentations is unethical in many aspects unless the person is not harmed mentally, emotionally or physically and consent is given by the participant him/herself.