According to a study, prolonged symptoms of COVID-19 may be correlated with difficulty in recognizing faces, a condition known as face blindness, as well as navigational issues. Face blindness is a relatively unknown condition. Previous research has shown that exposure to COVID-19 can result in a variety of neurological side effects, such as a loss of the senses of smell and taste as well as impairments in concentration, memory, speech, and language, collectively referred to as “brain fog.”
The most recent study, which was recently published in the journal Cortex, is the first to describe prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, as a consequence of experiencing symptoms that are consistent with COVID-19.
It has been suggested that between 2 and 2.5 percent of the world’s population suffers from the condition that can cause individuals to be unable to recognize the faces of familiar people.
The case of Annie, a customer service representative and part-time portrait artist in the United States who was diagnosed with COVID-19 in March 2020 and experienced a symptom relapse two months later was analyzed by the researchers. Annie is 28 years old and lives in the United States.
According to Marie-Luise Kieseler, a graduate student at Dartmouth College in the United States, “When I first met Annie, she told me that she was unable to recognize the faces of her family.” Kieseler went on to say that Annie now depends on voices to recognize people rather than faces.
After being exposed to COVID-19, Annie was also left with navigational difficulties. She depends on the pin function on Google maps to help her remember where she parked her car because she has trouble recalling the locations of specific sections in her grocery store and she has trouble remembering where she put her groceries away.
“The combination of prosopagnosia and navigational deficits that Annie had is something that caught our attention because the two deficits often go hand in hand after somebody has either had brain damage or developmental deficits,” said Brad Duchaine, the study’s principal author and a professor at Dartmouth. “The two deficits often go hand in hand after somebody has either had brain damage or developmental deficits,” said Duchaine.
“That co-occurrence is probably due to the two abilities depending on neighboring brain regions in the temporal lobe,” Duchaine said in a statement. This was said in reference to the fact that the co-occurrence occurred.
According to Dr. Vinit Suri, Senior Consultant, Neurology, at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals in New Delhi, the precise mechanisms by which long-term exposure to covids may cause face blindness are not yet completely understood; however, there are several potential explanations for this phenomenon.
According to what Suri told PTI, “First of all, long-term use of Covid can cause a range of neurological symptoms that may affect the brain regions responsible for face recognition, causing difficulty in both the processing of visual information and the recognition of familiar faces.”
“Secondly, Covid-19 has the potential to cause inflammation and damage to the blood arteries, both of which can result in a reduction in the amount of blood that is delivered to the brain. This can cause damage to the brain as well as cognitive impairments, including an inability to recognize faces,” he noted.
Annie was subjected to a battery of examinations by the research team so that they could evaluate the difficulties she has in recognizing faces and establish whether or not she also has difficulties with her other perceptive or cognitive abilities.
During one of the tests, Annie was shown sixty different photographs of famous people’s features in a row and asked to identify each one. Annie was able to accurately identify 29 out of the 48 celebrities that she was familiar with, which is significantly lower than the average person’s ability of 84 percent to correctly identify celebrities with whom they are familiar.
The doppelganger exam was the second one that was given. Annie was shown the name of a celebrity, and then she was shown pictures of two faces: the face of a celebrity, and the face of someone who looked very similar to the celebrity. She was then questioned about which face belonged to the famous person.
She was correct 69 percent of the time out of 58 attempts, which was significantly lower than the control group’s success rate of 87 percent.
“Our findings from the test with unfamiliar faces show that it wasn’t just that Annie couldn’t recall the name or biographical information of a famous person that she was familiar with, but that she really has trouble learning new identities,” said Kieseler. “Our findings show that she really has trouble learning new identities.”
In addition, the research team collected data from individuals who had self-reported that they had completely recovered from COVID-19, as well as data from individuals who had self-reported that they had long COVID with symptoms lasting for 12 weeks or more.
The majority of respondents who had long COVID indicated that they had experienced a decline in their cognitive and perceptual abilities since they had COVID.
“It was not just a small concentration of really impaired cases, but a broad majority of people in the long COVID group reported noticeable difficulties doing things that they were able to do prior to contracting COVID-19 without any problems,” Kieseler said. “It was not just a small concentration of really impaired cases.”
“Our study highlights the sorts of perceptual problems with face recognition and navigation that can be caused by COVID-19 — it is something that people should be aware of, particularly physicians and other health care professionals,” Duchaine added. “Our study highlights the sorts of perceptual problems with face recognition and navigation that can be caused by COVID-19.”
This is the first instance of long COVID causing prosopagnosia, according to Dr. Atul Prasad, Principal Director and Head of the Department of Neurology at BLK-Max Super Speciality Hospital in New Delhi.
“The more we study the virus, the more we realize how much damage it can cause during acute infection and now after infection has settled,” Prasad said in an interview with PTI. “The more we study the virus, the more we realize how much damage it can cause.”
Suri pointed out that not everyone with long-term exposure to COVID will develop face blindness, and that the severity of the symptoms and how long they last can differ greatly.
“Further research is required to better understand the relationship between long Covid and face blindness and to develop effective treatments and interventions for those who are affected,” he added. “Face blindness is a serious condition that can have lifelong consequences.”
