面孔失認症的病症 我們好像在哪見過

You wake up one morning to find a strange man standing in your kitchen. Worse than that he seems to have made himself completely at home.

當你早上醒來時，你發現自己的廚房裏有個陌生人，更糟糕的是他還完全不拿自己當外人。

A child is sitting in the living room watching television, on which somebody or other is giving a speech while standing next to a bust of some old guy. Who are these people? And where's your family?

而此時客廳裏有個小孩正在看電視，電視上不知是哪個人站在一個老人的半身雕像旁正在做演講。這些人是誰？你的家人去哪裏了？

If you suffered from the neurological disorder called "facial agnosia," a twilight-zone style experience of this sort might be a reality.

如果你曾經歷過一種名叫面孔失認症的神經紊亂，那麼這種模糊狀態歷可能會是真實的經歷。

Facial agnosia typically occurs to people who have received damage to the right hemisphere of the brain due to stroke or injury.

一般這種面孔失認症會發生在大腦右半球曾受過重創或損傷的人身上。

People with facial agnosia lose the ability to recognize even the most familiar faces: in this case a husband and daughter, the president of the United States and a bust of Abraham Lincoln.

面孔失認症患者甚至沒有能力去鑑別他們最熟悉的面孔，比如說他們的丈夫和女兒，或者美國總統和林肯半身像等等。

In severe cases an examining physician will be able to hold up a photograph of him or herself next to their own face and the patient suffering from facial agnosia will not be able to recognize the photograph is of the physician.

一些比較嚴重的情況是，當檢查醫生手拿一張醫生自己的照片放在自己的臉旁時，面孔失認症患者也不能辨別出照片上的人就是醫生。

What's especially interesting to researchers about this condition is its specificity. Visual ability itself is not damaged and the person with facial agnosia can still recognize everything, but faces.

使研究者覺得極爲有趣的是這種病症的獨特性，在視覺功能良好的情況下面孔失認症患者除了臉其他什麼都仍能識別。

They can still describe faces very accurately, but only in the way one describes an object: "He needs a shave. He has droopy eyes. He has a small scar."

他們還能十分準確的描述面部特徵，但是也僅限於描述具體對象：他鬍子太多了，他眼袋太大，他臉上有個小疤等等。

There is never a moment of Wait a minute—this is my high school yearbook picture.

但是患者從不會有這樣一刻：等等，這不是我高中時的年刊照片嗎。

Facial agnosia strongly suggests the existence of a mechanism in the brain devoted specifically to recognizing individuals we've seen before, a mechanism thought to exist in many other animals and even some insects.

面孔失認症強有力的證明了大腦中有這樣的特殊機制存在，它會專門致力於去辨別我們以前所見過的人，而其他動物甚至昆蟲也可能擁有這種特殊機制。