The mother who can't recognise her own children: Agony of woman who suffers from 'face blindness'
Imagine living in a world full of strangers, not even recognising the faces of your own family.
That is the world of Tara Fall.
Mrs Fall, from Iowa, has trouble remembering anyone and can only identify her two children when she picks them up from school by the clothes they are wearing.
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Disease: After a stroke damaged part of her brain, Tara Fall can't recognize faces, even if she's seen them hundreds of times before
Unknown: Everyone that comes through Tara's front door is a stranger to her and she only recognised Dr Snyderman from the clothes she was wearing
Mother: Tara joked that if her kids got changed at school she would be in 'big trouble'
She suffers from a rare condition known as prosopagnosia, which is also known as 'face blindness'.
Everyone who walks through her front door is a stranger to her - a friend, her husband, her children. If she looks away from you for a minute she will not recognise you the moment she looks back.
Speaking to the Today show, NBC Chief Medical Editor Nancy Snyderman explained how Mrs Fall, a stay-at-home mother whose husband is overseas at the Navy, copes with her condition.
Mrs Fall has explained to Dr Snyderman that she counts on remembering the clothes she has dressed her children in that morning.
She said: 'If they were ever to change their clothes at school I’d be in so much trouble.
'I take people in from the clothes they are wearing, their lipstick, jewellery, any other characteristics away from their actual face.'
Her reliance on subtle identifying clues means that in crowded places like Chuck E. Cheese, all the coping strategies can break down, leaving her a little bewildered.
She said she usually tries to find her daughters by a process of elimination that she calls 'inclusion and exclusion'.
'You know, there are little things to include, like you need two girls and they’re gonna be blond and they’re gonna be together,' she said.
Coping strategies: Tara Fall is a stay-at-home mom and her husband is overseas so she has to rely on a lot of her own techniques to recognise people
Specialist: Justin Feinstein, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Iowa, specializes in prosopagnosia
Scan: Justin Feinstein points to the area of Tara's brain that causes her to not recognise faces
Scientists haven’t yet figured out exactly what goes wrong in the brains of people with face blindness. But they figure a lot more people may suffer from it than is known as many are not diagnosed and suffer in silence.
Mrs Fall was not always like this. When she was 27 she had surgery to cure epilepsy that medication was not able to control.
WHAT IS PROSOPAGNOSIA?
Prosopagnosia is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while the ability to recognize other objects may be relatively intact.
The term originally referred to a condition following acute brain damage.
About two per cent of the population suffer from some sort of facial blindness
Few successful therapies have so far been developed for affected people, although individuals often learn to use 'piecemeal' or 'feature by feature' recognition strategies.
This may involve secondary clues such as clothing, gait, hair color, body shape, and voice.
Because the face seems to function as an important identifying feature in memory, it can also be difficult for people with this condition to keep track of information about people, and socialize normally with others.
Though doctors successfully removed the brain tissue that was causing the seizures, she suffered from a stroke at the end of the operation which left her with prosopagnosia.
Although doctors know how Mrs Fall lost her face memory, they can’t do anything to bring it back.
Dr Snyderman said: 'No cure. What she has now, she has for the rest of her life.'
Justin Feinstein, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Iowa who specializes in prosopagnosia, explained that the world is a stranger to Mrs Fall.
He said: 'The part of her brain that took the hit is the reason she cannot recognise people, even famous faces.'
When he showed her a picture of President Obama playing basketball she had no idea who he was because of the clothes he was wearing.
Mrs Fall didn't even recognise Dr Snyderman, who had spent the last eight hours with her.
But she is optimistic about life and focuses on the good things.
She told the Today show: 'I don’t know my kids, but I get to pick them up every day from school and they hold my hand and they are excited and they wrap their arms around me and they tell me, "thank you".
'What more do I need? I mean, I find so much strength from the simple gifts I get to experience every day.'
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