What's the name of that disorder where you can't recognize faces?

Search: disorder can't tell faces apart

Why: Chandler basically just asked me if Jude Law and Andre the Giant were the same person. Like, based on their facial features. Racial!

Answer: Prosopagnosia! (from Greek: prosopon = "face," agnosia = "inabilty to recognise/identify familiar people or objects"

I am reading this guy Bill's personal site about his prosopagnosia. Here is what he has to say:

I was born with a condition that makes it difficult for me to recognize faces. There is a small part of the brain that is dedicated to that job, and though it is small, when it comes to recognizing faces, it is very very good. In me, that part doesn't work, making me blind to all but the most familiar of faces. To help you understand this, let me compare it to two conditions you are probably more familiar with.

People who are "tone deaf" are not deaf to tones. They can hear tones, they just can't tell them apart. People who are "color blind" can see things that are in color. They just can't tell colors apart. Similarly, I can see faces. I just can't tell them apart.

"Face blindness" is either associated with damage to the temporal lobe or it is congenital, in which case it actually runs in families. It also usually comes along with a bunch of other neurological conditions - not specific ones, just other ones. Bill says (eloquently; you should read this someday):

When I was a kid my dad would bring home geese he had shot, and we'd have to eat them with care because we never knew where the pellets would show up. Every goose would have them, though. And that's how it often is with neurological stuff. Each guy who gets blasted gets his own unique bundle of problems depending on where the pellets ended up. I got distorted hearing, an unusual walking gait, face blindness of course, and a few other minor things that really don't affect my life much.

A lot of face blind people have Asperger's (Bill doesn't), and many have "topographic agnosia," which is an inability to visualize geographical space - the literal inability to read a map.

When he was young in the 50s and 60s, he learned how to tell people apart by the jeans they wore every day and, later, how long their dirty hippie hair was. He tells a few anecdotes where he doesn't recognize a police woman directing traffic or a park ranger (he thought big hat = cowboy), though those sound like bigger issues than just not distinguishing facial features, right? I don't know.

Anyway, because of the a disproportionate number of people with face blindness are gay men with long hair (gay longhairs). Take that to trivia night!

Source: Wikipedia, Face Blind!, Neurophilosophy

The More You Know: "Tip of the tongue" phenomenon - failure to retrieve a word from memory - is called dysnomia when it is a learning disability present since childhood, but anomia when acquired by brain damage. I can never remember that. In French, it's called presque vu, "almost seen."