Brad Pitt, an Oscar winner, claims he has an uncommon condition that makes it difficult for him to identify people’s faces.
Pitt suggested in a recent interview with GQ that he may suffer from prosopagnosia, a neurological disorder that makes it difficult to recognize people’s faces.
“Nobody believes me!” said Pitt, 58, who has not been officially diagnosed. “I wanna meet another [person with it].”
Pitt explained that he spends so much time at home due to his illness.
People with the disorder may have trouble differentiating among members of their own family or identifying themselves in images. They also have trouble recognizing people when they are out of their usual environments, such as if they were to run into a coworker at the grocery store.
Dr. James Galvin, director of the Comprehensive Center for Brain Health at the University of Miami, estimates that the illness affects about 2.5% of infants and young children.
Degenerative forms of prosopagnosia have been linked to illnesses like Alzheimer’s, according to Galvin’s comments in a university news release.
Damage to the fusiform gyrus, an important brain region for higher-level visual interpretation including face and object identification, can occur during pregnancy or shortly after delivery, leading to this disorder.
