Super Recognisers

Claudia Hammond investigates the science of face recognition. What if you could never forget a face? A group of people newly discovered to science have been dubbed 'super recognisers'. They have an extraordinary ability to recognise faces of everyone they meet, now matter how fleeting the encounter or how long ago. At the other extreme, imagine looking in the mirror and not recognising who was staring back at you, or not knowing which is your own child at the school gates. People with prosopagnosia or face blindness have those kinds of experiences every day. Claudia uncovers the extremes of a skill that is fundamental to social interaction but which science is only just beginning to understand. She talks to neuroscientists who have done some of the first fMRI brain scans to find out more about how our brains register faces. As many as one in fifty people are prosopagnosic, but many won't know they have a problem. What are the implications for border control, policing and eye witness evidence? Everyone struggles to recognise the faces of people they don't know, but what are the consequences for criminal justice? You can find out more about prosopagnosia and test your own face recognition abilities at www.faceblind.org.