Treatingprosopagnosia

There's no specific treatment for prosopagnosia, but researchers are continuing to investigate what causes the condition, and training programmes are being developed to help improve facial recognition.

It's thought that compensatory strategies that help with person recognition, or techniques that attempt to restore normal face-processing mechanisms, may work for some people with either developmental or acquired prosopagnosia.

A person's age when their brain was damaged (in the case of acquired prosopagnosia), the type and severity of the brain injury, and the timing of treatment, areall thought to beimportant factors in relation to how effective a rehabilitation programmewill be.

Many people withprosopagnosia develop compensatory strategies to help them recognise people, such as recognising a person's voice, clothing or gait (the way they walk).

However, compensatory strategies based on contextual cues don't always work, and may break down when a person with prosopagnosia meets someone they know in an unexpected location or who's changed their appearance.

Headway hasproduced afactsheet called Prosopagnosia face blindness after brain injury (PDF, 404kb) . It has some useful information about living with the condition, including social, observational, memory and navigation strategies, plus tips for watching TV and films.

Content supplied by the NHS Website

Medically Reviewed by a doctor on 21 Dec 2018