The New Yorker: How a Rare Disorder Makes People See Monsters

A mysterious neurological condition makes faces look grotesque—and sheds new light on the inner workings of the brain.

Article | Archive

PMO = prosopometamorphopsia

 

Visualising facial distortions in prosopometamorphopsia (2024)
Antônio Mello; Daniel Stehr; Krzysztof Bujarski; Brad Duchaine

A 58-year-old man with a 31-month history of seeing peoples’ faces as distorted and, in his words, appearing “demonic” visited our laboratory for assessment. The patient stated that the distortions—severely stretched features of the face, with deep grooves on the forehead, cheeks, and chin—were present on every person's face he encountered, but he reported no distortions when looking at objects, such as houses or cars. The patient said that even though faces were distorted, he was still able to recognise who they were.

Link | PDF (The Lancet)

Face distortions in prosopometamorphopsia provide new insights into the organization of face perception (2023)
Herald; Almeida; Duchaine

Prosopometamorphopsia (PMO) is a striking condition of visual perception in which facial features appear distorted, for example drooping, swelling, or twisting. Although numerous cases have been reported, few of those investigations have carried out formal testing motivated by theories of face perception. However, because PMO involves conscious visual distortions to faces which participants can report, it can be used to probe fundamental questions about face representations.

Here we review cases of PMO that address theoretical questions in visual neuroscience including face specificity, inverted face processing, the importance of the vertical midline, dissociable representations for each half of the face, hemispheric specialization, the relationship between face recognition and conscious face perception, and the reference frames that face representations are embedded within. Finally, we list and touch upon eighteen open questions that make clear how much is left to learn about PMO and the potential it has to provide important advances in face perception.

Link | PDF (Neuropsychologia)

 

This seems to be suggesting that EBV can cause brain damage. Perhaps supporting the hypothesis that ME/CFS is damage to a different part of the brain.

 

Sorry, my post was more questions than a statement. I need to emphasise there are lots of ifs and maybes with the idea that ME/CFS is brain damage. And the rapid remissions would seem to go against the idea.

I just couldn't recall if we had seen the suggestion that EBV in the form of a standard glandular fever illness could cause brain damage, other than the link with MS.