Brad Pitt Makes a Heartbreaking Statement About a Rare Disorder

Brad Pitt recently told GQ that he feels he has built a false picture of himself: one that is distant, remote, inaccessible, and self-absorbed. However, he feels he suffers from undetected prosopagnosia, sometimes known as “face blindness.”

Pitt’s condition is worse when he attends parties or social events. “Nobody believes me!” he said. “I wanna meet another.” And he’s experienced the symptoms for years in 2013, he told Esquire they discouraged him from leaving the house.

“So many people hate me because they think I’m disrespecting them,” he said at the time. “So I swear to God, I took one year where I just said, this year, I’m just going to cop to it and say to people, ‘Okay, where did we meet?’ But it just got worse. People were more offended.”

He continued: “Every now and then, someone will give me context, and I’ll say, ‘Thank you for helping me.’ But I piss more people off. You get this thing, like, ‘You’re being egotistical. You’re being conceited.’

But it’s a mystery to me, man. I can’t grasp a face and yet I come from such a design/aesthetic point of view. I am going to get it tested.”

He hasn’t been evaluated yet, he told GQ, but a neurologist often performs a series of face recognition tests to make a diagnosis.

So, what is prosopagnosia?

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the disorder, often known as “face blindness,” is characterized by anomalies, injury, or malfunction in the right fusiform gyrus, a fold in the brain that contributes to facial perception and recall according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). 

It has an impact on a person’s capacity to identify faces. The severity of the illness ranges, from being unable to recognize friends’ and family members’ faces to being unable to differentiate any face at all.

What causes prosopagnosia?

Prosopagnosia is classified into two types, each with its unique cause.

Developed prosopagnosia: According to the National Health Service of the United Kingdom, some persons are born with prosopagnosia without having had any brain injury, which is known as developmental prosopagnosia.

According to the NINDS, this kind frequently occurs in families and is thought to be the consequence of a genetic mutation or deletion.

Then there’s acquired prosopagnosia, which occurs after a brain injury. According to the NINDS, it can be caused by a stroke, severe brain damage, or certain neurodegenerative disorders.

Prosopagnosia treatments

While there is no one treatment for prosopagnosia, therapy frequently includes developing compensatory methods to use in social situations when facial recognition is required. Treatment frequently includes learning methods to use in social situations.

Adults whose condition was caused by a stroke or brain damage, according to the NINDS, can be retrained to recognize other cues with the use of various therapies.