September 2021
Volume 21, Issue 9
Open Access
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract  |   September 2021
Persisting Prosopagnosia due to COVID-19
Author Affiliations
  • Marie-Luise Kieseler
    Dartmouth College
  • Brad Duchaine
    Dartmouth College
Journal of Vision September 2021, Vol.21, 2408. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.21.9.2408
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      Marie-Luise Kieseler, Brad Duchaine; Persisting Prosopagnosia due to COVID-19. Journal of Vision 2021;21(9):2408. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.21.9.2408.

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      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

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Abstract

COVID-19 causes neurological problems including the loss of smell and taste (Mao et al., 2020), long-lasting memory, speech, and language impairments (Davis et al., 2020), and psychosis (Varatharaj et al, 2020). Visual problems have also been reported but no detailed case studies of the effects of COVID-19 on visual functions have been reported (Mao et al., 2020). Here, we provide the first report of a case of prosopagnosia following COVID-19. Annie is a 26-year-old woman who contracted COVID-19 in March 2020. She first noticed face recognition difficulties in June 2020 which have persisted for more than six months. Annie’s difficulties affect the recognition of faces that she is extremely familiar with. For example, when talking to her father she had the feeling that “My father’s voice came out of a stranger’s face.” On four tests of facial identity recognition (CFMT, Famous Faces, Old-New, Doppelganger), Annie showed clear impairments. She also scored more than one standard deviation below mean on the Cambridge Face Perception Test. In contrast, Annie scored normally on visual recognition tests involving objects and scenes, and on non-visual memory tests. Navigational deficits are common in acquired prosopagnosia (Schmidt, 2015), and Annie has noticed that her navigational abilities are substantially worse than they were before she became ill. She reports that she now has to think about where the dairy section is in her grocery store, she gets lost frequently, and has trouble finding her car in parking lots. Annie is the first documented case exhibiting selective impairments to face processing and navigation as a consequence of COVID-19. Whether a COVID-19 induced stroke caused Annie’s impairments is currently being assessed through MRI scans. Survey data we collected from 83 additional COVID-19 survivors indicates that navigational, object, and scene processing difficulties are not uncommon in COVID-19 survivors even after recovery.

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