“ confront sightlessness ” could be the late improver to the already retentive inclination of recollective COVID symptoms , new research has indicate . The subject is very diminished and has its limitation , but it seems that for some people , COVID-19 contagion may result in difficulty agnise faces , as well as maybe navigational problems .

COVID has antecedently been linked to a multitude of neurologic symptom , such as “ brain fog ” and the red ink of odor and tasting . Now , for the first time , face sightlessness , or prosopagnosia , has been associated with COVID infection .

Meeting her parent for the first time after give birth COVID , she walk right past them . When her father visit out to her , “ It was as if my dad ’s voice came out of a stranger ’s face , " she recounted in astatement . Annie now rely on articulation in ordering to accredit masses that she knows .

As well as face acknowledgement , her navigational abilities are also much risky than before she became inauspicious , which the writer say , is often seen following nous trauma .

“ The compounding of prosopagnosia and navigational deficits that Annie had is something that grab our attention because the two deficits often go hand in helping hand after somebody either has had brain equipment casualty or developmental deficits , ” said senior author Brad Duchaine .

“ That atomic number 27 - occurrence is probably due to the two ability depending on neighboring brain regions in the worldly lobe . ”

In a serial of tests designed to establish the severity of her facial recognition government issue , it became clear that Annie had particular trouble recognizing familiar faces and learning the identities of unfamiliar ones .

For the first trial , Annie was show up 60 images of celebrity aspect and postulate to name them , before being given a leaning of the celebrities to see if she did in fact hump them . Annie aright identified 29 percent of the 48 celebrities she was familiar with , liken to controls , who could identify almost 84 percent of familiar celebrities .

In another test , when tell a celebrity ’s name and gift with an range of a function of them alongside an image of a doppelganger , Annie identify that correct face 69 percent of the time , compared to 87 percent in the ascendancy radical .

Annie also struggled to learn and then recognize a previously unfamiliar grimace in a third test .

“ Our results from the exam with unfamiliar expression show that it was n’t just that Annie could n’t recall the name or biographical selective information of a famous person that she was intimate with , but she really has trouble see new identity , ” said lead author Marie - Luise Kieseler .

Annie ’s test scores were normal for face sensing , confront identity perception , and object recognition , suggesting that her problem recognize face may be due to face memory deficits .

To see if prosopagnosia followingCOVIDhas been go through by others , the team obtain self - reported data point from 54 mass who had long COVID symptoms for 12 week or more , and 32 people who had reported that they had fully recovered from the infection .

“ One of the challenges that many respondents reported was a difficulty with image family and friend , which is something that we often take heed from prosopagnosics , ” say Duchaine .

While the small sample size and ego - reportage of symptoms do circumscribe the findings , the survey still highlights the need for next inquiry into possible perceptual problems relate with COVID-19 .

“ As far as we be intimate , nobody ’s measured the sorts of high level , ocular processing ability that are affected by COVID-19 that we focalise on here in this paper , ” Duchaine resolve . “ If it ’s come about in the optical system of rules , it ’s likely that selective deficits due to job in other brain areas are fall out in some multitude as well . ”

The study is bring out inCortex .