(NewsNation) — Actor Brad Pitt says he suffers from a rare “face-blindness” condition called prosopagnosia, which impacts his ability to recognize people.
However, Pitt has never been officially diagnosed, and during a recent interview with GQ, Pitt said “Nobody believes me!” In 2013, Pitt told Esquire that several people hated him because they thought he was disrespecting them by forgetting their names.
What is prosopagnosia?
Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Real Housewives of Dallas star and anesthesiologist Dr. Tiffany Moon says that even if someone’s vision or memory is good, they can still suffer from the condition.
According to the National Health Service in the U.K., there are two types of prosopagnosia: developmental and acquired.
Developmental prosopagnosia is when a person has prosopagnosia without having brain damage, and acquired prosopagnosia is when a a person develops prosopagnosia after brain damage.
Why faces?
Moon explained that there is a specific lesion in the temporal occipital portion of the brain, which is responsible for the recognition of faces.
“For some reason, these regions of some people’s brain just don’t develop fully. They have a missing lesion in that area of the brain, and therefore, they have this very specific deficit, whereas everything else in their life appears to be normal,” Moon said.