Question:medium
What is prosopagnosia?
What is prosopagnosia?
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The word starts with the Greek root for "face".
Updated On: Jun 24, 2026
- Impairment of consciousness
- Being unaware of one's own problems
- Difficulty in identifying known faces
- Failure to identify objects
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The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
Step 1: Break the word down. "Prosopon" means face and "agnosia" means lack of knowing, so prosopagnosia literally means an inability to know or recognise faces.
Step 2: Clinically the patient sees the face perfectly well but cannot match it to a person they know, because the face-processing region in the fusiform gyrus of the temporo-occipital cortex is damaged. This points straight to difficulty identifying known faces.
Step 3: Match each wrong choice to its real name. Reduced awareness or alertness is an impairment of consciousness. Denial of one's own illness is anosognosia. Not recognising objects in general is object agnosia.
Step 4: Therefore the only definition that fits the term is the one describing failure to recognise familiar faces.
\[\boxed{\text{Difficulty in identifying known faces}}\]
Step 2: Clinically the patient sees the face perfectly well but cannot match it to a person they know, because the face-processing region in the fusiform gyrus of the temporo-occipital cortex is damaged. This points straight to difficulty identifying known faces.
Step 3: Match each wrong choice to its real name. Reduced awareness or alertness is an impairment of consciousness. Denial of one's own illness is anosognosia. Not recognising objects in general is object agnosia.
Step 4: Therefore the only definition that fits the term is the one describing failure to recognise familiar faces.
\[\boxed{\text{Difficulty in identifying known faces}}\]
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