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Hyperfamilarity with Faces is a rare condition characterized by a strong sense of facial recognition that has never been seen before.
In a recently published ScienceDirecta team of researchers discovered the cause of hyperfamilarity with faces (HFF)with the help of characters from the series “Game of Thrones“.
To understand the neurological underpinnings of this disease, scientists examined a patient’s brain activity, Nell, dand 49 years old, who developed the condition suddenly after a migraine.
Using brain imaging, the team observed Nell’s neural activity as she watched an episode of “Game of Thrones,” a series she had never seen before. Despite never having had contact with the characters, Nell stated recognize many of their faces.
The results of the images indicated that her visual system functioned normally during the experiment and showed regular activity in key regions of the brain involved in face recognition, such as the facial fusiform area.
However, notes the , it was found that the connectivity between these regions and the medial temporal lobe, which contains the hippocampus and other brain structures associated with memory, was excessively strong.
Researchers believe that the cause of HFF is due to a amplification of signals that circulate between the facial recognition regions and these memory structures trigger a feeling of familiarity towards all the faces that Nell sees.
“We were surprised to find that face-selective visual regions were intact. However, connectivity between visual brain regions responsible for processing faces and memory regions was increased in HFF,” explained the study’s first author. Kira Noad.
This finding suggests that the brain recognizes that it is seeing a face, and the oversensitive connection to memory regions of the brain triggers the false sensation that a face is familiar.
The study authors compared Nell’s brain activity to that of two groups of participantsone of which was made up of fans of the series, while the other was made up of people watching the series for the first time. Activity in Nell’s hippocampus matched that of series regulars, despite her never having seen an episode.
“Our findings provide insight into the underlying neural correlations which may be valuable for future interventions. We demonstrate that HFF is not a problem of visual processing, but can instead be better understood as a problem of a sensitive memory system,” the authors concluded.
