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" Face blindness , " or the inability to discern face , may be a rarefied symptom oflong COVID , a fresh case report suggests .
A case report published in March in the journalCortexsuggests a potential link between long COVID and selective face credit problem , but , for now , it ’s ill-defined if multitude other than the account ’s topic have developed the condition after a bout of coronavirus infection .
A patient developed face blindness after having COVID-19. (This is a stock photo and does not depict the patient described below.)
Annie , the case paper discipline , fell inauspicious with symptoms coherent with COVID-19 in March 2020 . That June , meeting her family for the first sentence since the onslaught of her sickness , she could n’t recognize her father ’s face . As a part - time portrait creative person , Annie also noticed that she could no longer obligate fount in her mind , have to continually count on cite photos to tie , rather than checker them a few times an hour , as she ’d antecedently done .
Face blindness , or prosopagnosia , is a condition that an estimated3 % of the populationare wear with , and roughly1 in 30,000acquire as a result of damage to region in the brain specialize for processing boldness , such as the fusiform gyrus . In Annie ’s typeface , she apparently acquired boldness blindness after falling ill with COVID-19 . Annie also reported difficulties in navigating conversant space , such as her local food market store . Navigational problems like this can oftenco - take place with face sightlessness .
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It is not the first time that an infectious disease has been associated with get boldness blindness . showcase have been describe followingbacterial meningitis , which causes redness of the brain and spinal electric cord , andWhipple disease , another bacterial infection that can bear on the nervous organization , although such cases appear rarefied .
Another case of a person prepare face cecity after COVID-19 infection was reported in a 2021 study in the journalActa Neuropsychologia . That affected role , however , had also brook a right hemisphere shot , which is normally colligate withacquired prosopagnosia .
" For most people , there is no known cause , " saidJohn Towler , a lecturer in psychology at Swansea University in the U.K. , who was not involved in Annie ’s case .
Researchers at Dartmouth College in the U.S. conducted assessments to better understand Annie ’s problems with boldness recognition . These included four side identity element memory tests gauging Annie ’s ability to agnise and remember both famous person ’s faces and random , new - to - her face . compare with a ascendence chemical group of 10 woman standardized to Annie in age , she performed significantly worse on all four trial .
Annie also showed other symptoms of recollective COVID , including fatigue andbrain fog . However , it is unlikely that her prosopagnosia symptoms get up from a worldwide downslope in cognitive use . Her impairment appear to be highly specific to facial recognition ; extra tests showed that her ability to detect faces , face personal identity perception ( the power to perceive and cognitively march a face ) , tell apart objects and scenes ( such as houses and natural scenes ) , and continue non - optic memories were part with .
" It ’s not necessarily surprising that a disease that has such a profound encroachment on the brain can lead to impairment . What is really interesting is that it is such a selective and extremely specific deterioration , " saidMarie - luise Kieseler , lead author of the sketch and a doctorial scholarly person at Dartmouth .
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Even inmild event , COVID-19 has been linked tostructural changesin the brain . However , research so far betoken that the brain structures such as thelimbic and olfactory cortical systemare those most move by the coronavirus .
It is ill-defined exactly how COVID-19 might have impart to Annie ’s sudden face sightlessness . Annie ’s lawsuit raises the interrogation as to whether other citizenry with long COVID may be sham with similar symptom .
To begin investigating this , the research worker at Dartmouth collected self - reported datum from retentive COVID patients . A majority of this group indicated their overall optical credit — not specifically colligate to face — and navigation capableness had worsen since their sickness onset .
Since thepandemic , neither Kieseler nor Towler has noticed an increase in masses coming forward with symptoms of face sightlessness . However , symptoms of face blindnessexist on a spectrum , and mild cases , where the unfitness to acknowledge face may not be so stern , may go unreported . " If you only decline mildly , that might not be your independent business concern , especially if you are dealing with a lot of other thing due to COVID , " Kieseler said .
In future enquiry task , including brain imaging studies , the squad plans to ferment with more masses who ’ve developed aspect - processing problems after catching COVID-19 to well understand the connectedness between the contagion and front sightlessness .
Treatment for face blindness is limited , although this may shift . Jodie Davies - Thompson , another reader of psychological science at Swansea , has develop a training program for improving typeface secernment in bothdevelopmentalandacquiredface blindness . Towler say that they ’ve visualise improvements in specific brass perception tasks among people in the program , but further ontogeny is needed to control these improvements translate to existent - humans scenarios .
