[Book Sip] To Remember Faces Well, Look with the 'Left Eye'

Editor's NoteSome sentences encapsulate the entire content of a book, while others instantly resonate with readers, creating a connection with the book. Here, we excerpt and introduce such meaningful sentences from the book.

The author, a freelance science journalist, has difficulty remembering faces. She failed to recognize a middle school friend throughout high school, sometimes mistook her aunt for her mother, and even once mistook a stranger in a supermarket for her husband. It turned out that the author not only had prosopagnosia but also stereoblindness, aphantasia, and autobiographical memory deficit known as SDAM. This book is an experimental nonfiction based on the author's experiences. Through the quirky incidents she encountered, it scientifically explores how the brain perceives the world.

Do you remember the dress photo that went viral for appearing white and gold to some people and black and blue to others? We all see the same image, yet perceive completely different things. This phenomenon is not a coincidence but happens all the time. The world is full of ambiguous information, and since brains differ, judgments inevitably vary. From the 「Preface」

About 36 percent of people with autism spectrum disorder have face blindness. However, researchers often exclude autistic individuals from prosopagnosia studies because they believe that face blindness related to autism may have a different developmental pathway than other forms of prosopagnosia (this assumption remains controversial). From 「Faces Are Strange, Because Everyone Is Different」

Neurodiversity activists argue that autism and ADHD should be accepted as differences that come with both weaknesses and strengths. They also call for greater understanding and consideration for people with atypical brains. This benefits everyone, especially as humanity faces an existential crisis and needs the power of all brains. From 「The Key to Face Recognition, the Fusiform Face Area」

This means that early exposure to faces through the left eye is crucial for developing the ability to recognize faces. What about the right eye? It is less important. This research finding makes sense because, in infants, the left eye primarily connects to the right hemisphere of the brain. If the left eye's vision is weak, the right fusiform face area, which plays a key role in face recognition, does not receive the visual information it needs to develop. From 「A Driver Who Cannot See in 3D, Goes on the Road」

This result helps us understand the concept of a critical period in development. The critical period refers to a short time when neuroplasticity occurs, after which the arrangement of neurons becomes fixed. In the case of stereopsis, this period is very brief. Infants begin to see objects in 3D around three and a half months old, but many children and some adults acquire stereopsis much later. For example, Susan Barry gained 3D vision for the first time at age forty-eight, something most people thought impossible. From 「The World of Stereoblindness」

Although aphantasia was a significant disadvantage during elementary school, Venter says that the ability to think in big-picture terms helped differentiate her as a scientist and administrator.
“My brain’s way of working probably contributed more to my success than any of my traits. It’s not just that I can’t see pictures. The entire way I view the world is different from most people.” From 「Can Visual Memory Be Learned?」

Because I did not fully understand the neurodiversity hidden from the world, I sometimes misunderstood my closest friends. Miriam does not obsess over the past by choice. Although unimaginable to me, Miriam’s past is closer to the present than I realize. Sybil used to annoy me by worrying if she left the oven on, but after learning she vividly imagines the house burning down, I can empathize with her concerns. Steve did not ‘choose to forget’ doing the dishes. He genuinely just forgot. From 「What It Feels Like to Become a Bat」

In fact, I was a compulsive recorder of my life long before becoming a journalist. Then, from the crisis of eccentric middle age, I gained the last and perhaps greatest insight. I do not ‘have’ prosopagnosia, stereoblindness, aphantasia, or SDAM. These are ‘me.’ They are grains of sand inside the shell called me, tormenting me in various ways to create the pearl called ‘Sadie-ness.’ Prosopagnosia gifted me with strong affinity and a brave heart unafraid of the unknown. Stereoblindness gave me the perspective of a perpetual outsider. SDAM and aphantasia led me to become a storyteller and writer, helping me record important moments I might have otherwise forgotten. From 「The Me Who Sees Differently Is Also Me」

The Brain That Cannot Recognize Faces | Written by Sadie Dingfelder | Translated by Lee Jeongmi and Lee Eunjeong | Woongjin Knowledge House | 388 pages | 19,800 KRW