Joachim bodamer biography

The historical background & emerging recognition

Though difficulties in face recognition were noted over a hundred years ago, understanding of prosopagnosia is still unfolding. 

History of prosopagnosia (with thanks to Oliver Sacks)

• 1790s   Franz Joseph Gall, anatomist, proposed that mental functions arose from the brain, rather than from the soul, heart or liver.

• 1865  Paul Broca established that specific areas of the brain were linked to specific neurological and cognitive functions.

• 1872  Hughlings Jackson described a clinical case of specific visual agnosia for faces and places. 

• 1947  Joachim Bodamer, a German neurologist, coined the term ‘prosopagnosia’ to describe three patients with difficulty recognising faces, but with no other visual processing difficulties – the result of head injury (acquired prosopagnosia). It was Bodamer who adopted the term Prosopagnosia.  The name comes from the Greek – prosop (meaning face) & agnosia (meaning a lack of knowledge). 

• 1955  Christopher Pallis, an En
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  Joachim Bodamer, was a Germanneurologistresponsible for naming the disorder prosopagnosia. The selective inability to recognize faces was reported throughout the 19th century, and included case studies by Hughlings Jackson and Charcot but was not formally named until Bodamer ublished his work in 1947.

  He described three cases, including a 24-year-old man who suffered a bullet wound to the head and lost his ability to recognize his friends, family, and even his own face. However, he was able to recognize and identify them through other sensory m

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  Prosopagnosia

  Lowered ability to recognize people by their faces

  Medical condition

  Prosopagnosia,^[2] also known as face blindness,^[3] is a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one's own face (self-recognition), is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision-making) remain intact. The term originally referred to a condition following acute brain damage (acquired prosopagnosia), but a congenital or developmental form of the disorder also exists, with a prevalence of 2.5%.^[4]

  The brain area usually associated with prosopagnosia is the fusiform gyrus,^[5] which activates specifically in response to faces. The functionality of the fusiform gyrus allows most people to recognize faces in more detail than they do similarly complex inanimate objects. For those with prosopagnosia, the method for recognizing faces depends on the less sensitive object-recognition system. The right hemisphere fusiform gyr