FACE BLIND PATIENTS WANTED FOR A CLINICAL STUDY

There was a fascinating segment recently on 60 Minutes, about face blindness, which is also known as prosopagnosia, combining the words in Greek for "face" and "lack of knowledge". You can see the 60 Minutes segment, by clicking on this link. The face blindness segments are the second and third segments, after the Social Security story.

Prosopagnosia is a cognitive disorder, where the ability is missing to recognize familiar faces, including one's own face. While all other aspects of visual processing, such as object discrimination and other forms of intellectual functioning remain intact.

The term originally referred to a condition following some type of brain damage, which is acquired prosopagnosia, but there is also congenital or developmental prosopagnosia, which does tend to sometimes appear to be genetically linked and can therefore run in families.

Prosopagnosia may affect up to 2.5% of the population. The reasons why this condition was never significantly diagnosed in the past, is that many people who have face blindness thought that they were "normal". Others did not want to classified as abnormal and hid their condition from others.

The specific brain area associated with prosopagnosia and face recognition is the fusiform gyrus, which is in the temporal lobe of the brain.

For those with prosopagnosia, their method for recognizing faces depends on other cues, such as someone's voice, hairstyle, body shape and mannerisms.

The right hemisphere fusiform gyrus is more often involved in face recognition than the left. It remains unclear whether the fusiform gyrus is predominately for the recognition of human faces, or if it is also involved in analyzing other visual stimuli.

To date, there has been no successful treatment for face blindness.

There is a unique chiropractic technique that I practice, which is called Koren Specific Technique.

I hypothesize that Koren Specific Technique might very well help patients with congenital or developmental prosopagnosia tremendously.

These are the reasons why:

1. Patients with congenital or developmental prosopagnosia have a right as well as left fusiform gyrus that appear totally normal and intact on MRIs. The problem of face blindness therefore may be functional and not anatomical.

2. One of the cornerstones taught in Koren Specific Technique is adjusting of the cranial bones. The growth plate sutures of cranial bones do not fuse the way other growth plates fuse in the human body. When cranial bones are jammed or subluxated and not functioning properly, this can cause a number of significant functional problems. These problems can be with the brain or with the body.

3. Other conditions, such as ADD, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, OCD and others have been significantly helped with Koren Specific Technique.

4. I theorize that removing these cranial subluxations may help patients with congenital or developmental prosopagnosia. Adjusting subluxations of the sphenoid and the temporal bones of are particular importance in many cases of neurological malfunction.

These adjusting techniques are very gentle. I use a computerized mechanical adjusting instrument, called an Ultralign G2.. I typically only use 10 pounds of force, which has been well tolerated and has caused ho pain of discomfort in any patient that I have ever treated.

I am looking for 5 patients with congenital or developmental prosopagnosia, who would be willing to participate in a 2 week trial. These patients would each receive an examination, a consultation and 6 treatments. They would not be charged anything for their 2 week treatment regimen.

These are the requirements for participation in the clinical study:

1. The patients are not Medicare patients.

2. The patient provides me with proof of being diagnosed with congenital or developmental prosopagnosia, such as a letter from their primary care physician or neurologist.

3. The patient has had no diagnoses of a stroke, a neurodegenerative disease, a brain injury or brain tumor and has not had brain surgery.

If you are interested or know someone who may be interested in participating in this study, please contact my office:

Michael S. Evangel, DC

56 North Central Ave.

Ramsey, NJ 07446

(201) 447-3800

drevangel@drevangel.com

My Website

More Information On Prosopagnosia

Information on Koren Specific Technique