the mind is a weird freaky thing

I just read an article about prosopagnosia- a very rare disorder wherein the sufferer can't recognize faces, anyone's face. In some extreme cases, this includes the person's own face, their mother's face, their lover's face, anyone's face. Prosopagnosia isn't only restricted to folks with injuries and lesions to the brain. Some folks are born with it. For those folks who are born with it, it seems that is the only disorder that they have (well, besides the discomfort of not being able to socially interact with people very well because they simply can't remember faces well enough to greet them on the street- even people they see every single day).

I can't imagine what it must be like to walk around all day and be surrounded by a sea of unrecognizable heads only to go home. Or to only be able to recognize that it is oneself in the mirror because of one's hair or dress.

What is also very interesting about this is that some cognitive scientists say that this is evidence that the brain is less connected, and more compartmentalized than one thinks. I don't know how this fits with evidence of the plasticity of brains and the ability for the brain to overcome some disorders as a result of injury or lobotomy. Plasticity would suggest that the brain may be less compartmentalized than one thinks. Or maybe I am thinking about this wrong. Maybe the better analogy is that the brain is filled with a whole mess of highly skilled and adaptable workers who work in different departments but when one department closes down, those workers may move to another department.

Interesting. The mind is an incredibly weird and freaky thing.