“Face blindness”, also known as prosopagnosia, is considered a new rare symptom of long-term covid, according to researchers at Dartmouth College, in the United States. People with this type of neurological sequel have difficulty recognizing familiar faces, including those of family, friends and even celebrities.
Here, it should be noted that face blindness as a result of the acute phase of covid-19 is really rare. According to scientists, the issue has never been studied with the necessary attention. Among the few known patients is 28-year-old American woman Annie, who was infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in March 2020, before the first vaccines were developed.
Annie’s case report with face blindness and disturbances in the sense of navigation was published in the scientific journal Cortex. In the article, the pair of researchers, Marie-Luise Kieseler and Brad Duchaine, describe that the rare symptom was identified, for the first time, two months after the patient recovered from covid-19.
How does face blindness manifest in cases of long covid?
In the study, the authors describe that Annie did not recognize her own parents when she saw them after having developed face blindness. On their first date at a restaurant, she didn’t immediately identify them and looked at them as if they were strangers. “It was as if my father’s voice came out of a stranger’s face,” says the patient in a statement. Including, the voice is the strategy she has used to identify acquaintances.
In addition to the issue involving facial recognition, the woman reports that her navigation skills are also worse than before the illness. For example, she often forgets where certain sectors in the market are and has difficulty knowing where she parked her car. “Both deficits are usually common after someone has had brain damage,” explains Duchaine.
Tests confirm difficulty recognizing familiar faces
Annie even went through a series of tests that seek to measure her facial recognition ability. In the proposed experiments, it was possible to identify that the patient has difficulty in recognizing familiar faces, but also in learning new faces from unknown people.
“In contrast, she scored normally on tests that assess face detection, perception of facial identity, object recognition, scene recognition, and non-visual memory,” say the researchers. Basically, she sees a face or an object, knowing what they are. The problem is related to the association between family members and their faces.
Next steps of the study on the long covid symptom
“Annie’s results indicate that COVID-19 can produce severe and selective neuropsychological impairment similar to the deficits seen after brain damage, and it appears that high-level visual impairments are not uncommon in people with long-term COVID-19,” the authors add.
Now, the idea is to track more cases of patients who developed the same condition, seeking to understand how face blindness can be treated. They are even recruiting volunteers right now. Another point is to investigate whether vaccination against covid-19 can prevent this rare and unwanted symptom of long-term covid. At this point, previous research indicates that, today, the risk of developing sequelae from the disease is significantly lower.
Source: Cortex e EurekAlert
