An Excerpt From 'The Mind's Eye' by Oliver Sacks

I assumed that I was just very bad at recognizing faces, as my friend Jonathan was very good — that this was within the limits of normal variation, and that he and I just stood at opposite ends of a spectrum. It was only when I went to Australia to visit my older brother Marcus, whom I had scarcely seen in 35 years, and discovered that he, too, had exactly the same difficulties recognizing faces and places that it dawned on me that this was something beyond normal variation, that we both had a specific trait, a so-called prosopagnosia, probably with a distinctive genetic basis. … Back to Article