Sorry—Who Are You?

year ignoring him. "I never saw him again," he says. "Well, I'm sure I walked past him plenty of times, but I just didn't see him." This behavior wasn't intentional. Jacob just couldn't recollect what his fellow student looked like. He had had the same trouble all his life. Friends and relatives would greet him, and he would have no idea who they were. It wasn't until five years ago that it all made sense. That was when Hodes was diagnosed with prosopagnosia, a condition that means he is unable to recognize faces. According to researchers, he is far from alone. In fact, the condition is not that uncommon, but until a few years ago, only a few dozen cases had ever been described, and all of these had been caused by brain injury. Recently, though, researchers identified a second form of face blindness—developmental prosopagnosia, which is either present from birth or develops very early in life.