How the world sees Greece
BRUSSELS (Alliance News) - Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos was in Brussels on Friday for a special meeting with the country's creditors to discuss Greek progress on labour market and energy sector reforms. The meeting comes amid international ...
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[young woman outside thinking looking at camera]Unsplash/Alex Lambley * SOME PEOPLE HAVE A CONDITION THAT MAKES IT DIFFICULT FOR THEM TO RECOGNIZE FAMILIAR FACES, EVEN THOSE OF FRIENDS AND FAMILY. SOMETIMES THEY MAY EVEN HAVE ISSUES RECOGNIZING THEMSELVES. THIS IS CALLED PROSOPAGNOSIA. * PROSOPAGNOSIA IS ESTIMATED TO AFFECT ABOUT 1% OF THE POPULATION. * IT'S NOT NECESSARILY LINKED TO BRAIN DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM; THE PROLIFIC AUTHOR AND NEUROLOGIST OLIVER SACKS WAS A PROSOPAGNOSIC. * MERRIAM-WEBSTER ADDED PROSOPAGNOSIA TO THE DICTIONARY EARLIER THIS WEEK. I've seen a lot of faces that I can't forget. No, I'm not talking about being in love, as The Beatles lyrics might imply. Instead, I may be a super-recognizer, meaning that other peoples' faces get strangely seared into my brain — even those of complete strangers. It's not that I necessarily want to remember them — I just can't seem to help it. And I'm not alone. Josh P. Davis, a psychology professor at the University of Greenwich in England who studies the phenomenon, told me he estimates some 1% of the population could qualify as super-recognizers. (Keep in mind, Davis said — "if you do very well then you _may_ be a super-recognizer" — if you want to know for sure, you can inquire with his team about additional testing.) But it turns out that another 1% of the population appears to fall into a category that might be best-described as the _opposite_ of super-recognition. These face-blind people, or "prosopagnosics," a term that neuroscientists have used to refer to them for several years but was only officially added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary this month, essentially cannot recognize familiar faces. 'PROSOPAGNOSIA' IS ESSENTIALLY FACE BLINDNESS The word prosopagnosia, which combines the Greek words "prosopon," or face, with "agnos," or lack of knowledge, dates back to when researchers first identified the "condition" in people with brain damage to a specific area of the brain called the fusiform face area, or FFA, about 30 years ago. Scientists believe the FFA is thought to play a key role in our ability to identify a face. Prosopagnosics, they found, had severe difficulties recognizing familiar faces — even, sometimes, their own. [Oliver Sacks]Chris McGrath/Getty ImagesBut you don't have to have experienced brain damage to have prosopagnosia. More recently, researchers have diagnosed the condition in perfectly healthy people who appear to be born with it. The deficit, called "developmental prosopagnosia," doesn't appear to negatively affect other intellectual efforts in these people. Oliver Sacks, the renowned neurologist and prolific writer, for example, was a prosopagnosic. He wrote extensively about his condition in the book "The Mind's Eye." "I am much better at recognizing my neighbors' dogs (they have characteristic shapes and colors) than my neighbors themselves," Sacks wrote. 'SUPER-RECOGNITION,' ON THE OTHER HAND, IS A SUPERIOR ABILITY TO PICK OUT A FAMILIAR FACE In the first paper to mention the phrase "super-recognizer," published in 2009, University College London cognitive neuroscientist Brad Duchaine, along with Harvard psychologists Ken Nakayama and Richard Russell, outlined the experiences of four people who claimed to have an unusually good ability to recognize faces. In addition, the researchers presented the world's first test designed to identify these so-called super-recognizers, the Cambridge Face Memory Test, which you can take online now. All four subjects in the paper described eerie instances in their past in which they had recognized apparent strangers: family members they hadn't seen for decades or actors they'd glimpsed once in an ad and then seen again in a movie. Each person in the study said that for years they'd felt as if something were wrong with them. One of the participants, for example, told the researchers she tried to hide her ability and "pretend that I don't remember ... because it seems like I stalk them, or that they mean more to me than they do." For the first time, the Cambridge test suggested to these people that they weren't alone — that their abilities weren't merely in their head but quantifiable, testable, able to be proved and put down on paper. WHAT WE KNOW — AND DON'T KNOW — ABOUT FACIAL RECOGNITION Research suggests that facial super-recognition is fundamentally different from traditional memory in several key ways. First, the ability doesn't appear to be able to be learned or enhanced with training. Second, it appears to have a neurological and structural basis. [Face_recognition]Wikimedia CommonsBut there's still a lot we don't know about super-recognition — and about facial recognition more broadly. In a recent study in the journal PLoS One, for example, researchers studied two so-called memory champions, people who had competed extensively in memory contests and had even been recognized by the Guinness World Book of Records for their memorization skills. When the researchers studied these people's facial-recognition abilities, however, their results were merely average. In other words, the researchers concluded, something about facial processing was fundamentally different from memory — and it couldn't be learned by any training or class. Instead, it seemed to be innate. And if people are born with their facial-recognition abilities, then they most likely have a neurological basis in the brain, researchers say. A super-recognizer, for example, might have a slightly larger fusiform face area than a face-blind person, or the person might show more activity in this area when looking at images of a face. "Any time there's a psychological difference there has to be a neurological basis," said Duchaine, the University College London cognitive neuroscientist. "Just like you'd say, OK, that car is faster than that other car. Is there a difference in their engines? Well yes of course there is." Still, Duchaine and other researchers lack the data to confirm this. All of the existing studies of super-recognizers are based on very small samples of people — anywhere from just two individuals to a half-dozen people. Several of the researchers have presented their hypotheses about super-recognizers at conferences and presentations, but many of these haven't yet been published in peer-reviewed journals. So what exactly _are_ prosopagnosia and super-recognition? Skills? Signs of intelligence? Quirky developmental traits? That's something that remains to be seen. NOW WATCH: Neuroscientists are trying to understand how the brains of elite athletes work
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Stepping back from the brink once more, the IMF and euro zone have agreed on Greece's latest bailout, Handelsblatt has confirmed. Athens must still accept the tough deal, but markets have calmed. Just as talk of “Grexit” once again reared its ugly ...
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Authorities in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki are making arrangements to evacuate about 75,000 people from three neighbourhoods ahead of efforts to defuse a 227-kilograms unexploded Second World War bomb. Bomb disposal experts are to tackle the ...
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The Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos has been meeting top European officials in Brussels on Friday to try to break the deadlock over stalled bailout talks. Earlier the International Monetary Fund and Greece’s lenders from the eurozone agreed to ...
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A reporter for a Swedish television station and two of his colleagues were sentenced to probation and community service on Thursday for smuggling a 15-year-old Syrian boy -- who they said pleaded with them for help -- out of Greece more than two years ago.
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[Security removes people] Here is what you need to know. STOCKS ARE AT ALL-TIME HIGHS. Thursday's gain of 0.6% across the board ran all three of the major averages into record territory. The S&P 500 is set to open up 0.1% near 2,311. TRUMP CHANGES HIS TUNE ON THE 'ONE CHINA' POLICY. In his first phone call as president with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Donald Trump said he would honor the policy that China and Taiwan belong to a single country. TRUMP'S BORDER WALL WOULD REPORTEDLY COST $21.6 BILLION. The wall would be built in sections and take more than three years to complete, Reuters reports, citing a US Department of Homeland Security internal report. CHINA'S JANUARY TRADE DATA BLEW AWAY EXPECTATIONS. Exports climbed 7.9% in US dollar terms while imports jumped 16.7%, making for a trade surplus of $51.35 billion, the highest since January 2016. The data may be affected by distortions from the Lunar New Year holiday. THE EUROZONE AND IMF HAVE REACHED A COMMON STANCE ON GREECE. Details of the agreement are unclear and are being presented to Greece on Friday, Reuters reports. Greece's two-year yield is down 130 basis points at 8.28%%. BRITISH INDUSTRY HAD A BLOWOUT DECEMBER. Industrial production in the UK climbed 4.3% versus a year ago in December, well ahead of the 3.2% growth that economists had forecast, according to data released Friday by the Office for National Statistics. OIL IS RALLYING ON OPEC. West Texas Intermediate crude oil is higher by 0.9% at $53.46 a barrel after data released by the International Energy Agency showed a record-high 90% compliance to the OPEC output deal in the first month, Reuters reports. INVESTMENT IN THE MARIJUANA INDUSTRY ISN'T SLOWING DOWN UNDER TRUMP. Industry executives who spoke with Business Insider said they hoped Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has been outspoken against legalizing marijuana, will focus his attention on President Trump's priorities, like overhauling immigration, rather than picking a fight with legal marijuana. YELP IS PLUNGING AFTER ITS REVENUE OUTLOOK MISSES. Shares sank by as much as 11% after Thursday's closing bell when the company announced its first-quarter revenue would be in a range of $195 million to $199 million, below the $204.4 million that was expected by the Bloomberg consensus. US ECONOMIC DATA FLOWS. University of Michigan consumer confidence will be released at 10 a.m. ET, and the Baker Hughes rig count will cross the wires at 1 p.m. ET. The US 10-year yield is higher by 2 basis points at 2.41%. Join the conversation about this story »
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