Perception disorder turns other people’s faces into grimaces

Prosopometamorphopsia

April 15, 2024 4:11 p.m. Robert Klatt

Prosopometamorphopsia (PMO) causes people to see other people’s faces in a distorted way. Researchers have created visualizations of perceptual disorder for the first time.

Hanover (United States). Prosopometamorphopsia (PMO) is a rare disorder in which affected individuals perceive the faces of others as distorted grimaces. The perceptual disorder makes social contact very difficult and causes people to largely withdraw. Researcher of Dartmouth College around Antônio Mello have now visualized the perception of how a person with PMO sees others.

According to the publication in the specialist magazine Clinical images Other people appear to the 58-year-old patient as if they were the faces of demons. The mouth and eye contour are considerably elongated and the facial wrinkles are very deep. Additionally, the ears are very long and pointed. The faces appear to the patient, who confirmed that the images correspond to his perception, similar to creatures from a fantasy film.

Don’t make demonic faces in photos and the like.

The patient has a rare form of PMO in which the perceptual disorder only occurs in real people. However, when the patient sees images, there is no distortion of the faces. It was therefore possible for the person concerned to compare the image processing on the computer with their perception of real people in the same room. According to the researchers, this is an opportunity that science has not had before.

“In other studies of this disorder, PMO patients have not been able to rate how accurately the visualizations represent what they see. Because the visualization also shows a face, and they perceive it in an equally distorted way.

According to Brad Duchaine, the results could help treat cognitive disorders. The problem, however, is that this rare disease often goes undiagnosed.

“Several people with PMO have told us that psychiatrists have diagnosed them with schizophrenia and prescribed psychotropic medications. »

Additionally, many people with PMO do not seek medical help because they are afraid of being stigmatized due to their psychiatric illness.

“It’s a problem that people often don’t understand. »

It is still unclear why the perception disorder occurs. The study participant has a variety of possible causes, including post-traumatic stress disorder, prior bipolar disorder, potential carbon monoxide poisoning shortly before first symptoms, and severe head trauma.

Clinical images, doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00136-3