Long thought to be schizophrenia, what a person with ‘demon face syndrome’ or prosopometamorphopsia (PMO) sees has been a mystery until now.
So far, only about 75 cases of PMO have been recorded. This condition makes people see faces in a very strange and often scary way.
However, one unique person, a 58-year-old man who contacted experts at Dartmouth, can see faces normally in pictures and on screens, but in real life, he sees frightening ‘demon faces.’
This situation helped him and the researchers show, for the first time, what he sees when he looks at people’s faces with PMO.
“Most stories about PMO are short reports on single cases,” said Dartmouth Professor Brad Duchaine to DailyMail.com, “written by neurologists who met them in their work.”
“Our study is very interesting,” he said, “because we can be sure that the strange ways he sees faces really show what he experiences.”
A special person with a type of ‘demon face syndrome’ can see faces normally in pictures and on screens but sees scary ‘demon faces’ when looking at people in real life. This situation helped scientists show, for the first time, how faces appear to someone with prosopometamorphopsia (PMO).
The issues leading to PMO were often seen as damage or lesions in parts of the brain called the occipital and temporal lobes. These are near the areas that help us recognize faces. However, some cases of PMO are more mysterious and not easy to explain.
“People with PMO sometimes don’t talk about their issues with seeing faces,” said Duchaine, who helped write the new study. “They worry that others might think they have a mental health disorder. It’s something many people don’t really understand.”
Duchaine and a student named Antônio Mellon worked with a 58-year-old man who has PMO. They did tests with him similar to what a police sketch artist might do.
The team from Dartmouth’s Social Perception Lab started by taking a photo of someone’s face. They then showed the man with PMO this photo on a screen and asked him to look at the person’s real face and talk about any differences he noticed.
The way he sees distortions shows us that our experience of the world is created by our brain,” Professor Brad Duchaine explained. By using feedback from a 58-year-old man with PMO, Duchaine and his colleague, Mellon, adjusted a photo to match the distorted faces he saw, resulting in goblin-like features. Their findings in The Lancet highlight how PMO affects perception.
This study opens doors to understanding PMO, a condition causing people to see distorted faces, which can be triggered by brain damage. Duchaine’s team is exploring more cases, noting some people experience these distortions without a known cause or have had them their whole lives.
The condition, known since 1953, often gets misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, but it’s related to how the brain processes visuals.
Vocabulary Insights:
- Schizophrenia/?sk?t.s??fri?.ni.?/: A mental health condition causing people to interpret reality abnormally.
- Prosopometamorphopsia (PMO)/?pr?.s?p.??m?t.??m?r.f?p.si.?/: A rare condition where individuals see distorted faces.
- Dartmouth/?d??rt.m??/: An Ivy League university known for its research contributions.
- Neurologists/nj??r?l.?.d??sts/: Medical doctors specializing in the nervous system.
- Damage/?dæm.?d?/?Lesions/?li?.??nz/: Physical harm to the brain affecting its function.
- Occipital/??k?s?p.?.t?l/ and Temporal Lobes/?t?m.p?.r?l ?lo?bz/: Regions in the brain responsible for processing visual information and memory, respectively.
Vocabulary List:
- Schizophrenia (noun): A mental health condition causing people to interpret reality abnormally.
- Prosopometamorphopsia (PMO) (noun): A rare condition where individuals see distorted faces.
- Dartmouth (noun): An Ivy League university known for its research contributions.
- Neurologists (noun): Medical doctors specializing in the nervous system.
- Damage (noun): Physical harm to the brain affecting its function.
- Lesions (noun): Physical harm to the brain affecting its function.
