It comes in degrees as well, say from mild (1) to severe (10). If severe, Brad does not recognize someone from one interaction to another (the next day). As a few posters have noted the beauty of his women, prosopagnosia does not affect one's ability to recognize or perceive beauty.
I believe I have a mild (say 3-4) case of this disorder. It is a flaw, either inherited or via trauma (scientists don't really know for sure - but that's true of most of the brain's functions!).
Anyway, it's a flaw in the wiring of the fusiform 'facial recognition' area of the brain. Normally we recognize faces & familiarity with ease - greater ease than we remember the names that go with the faces, yes?
Yes. Nat Geo did a fMRI on Susan Polgar's brain and found she did most of her chess problem-processing in this area of the brain...making patterns and their solutions "easily recognizable" because the problems were processed in that specific (easy-to-access-for-normals) area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wzs33wvr9E
There must be a strong, very strong resemblance between two people before I can equate them as say, father/son, mother/daughter, etc. When the disorder is severe, it is incredibly frustrating, and in fact, maybe Brad Pitt channels his frustration into his deeply emotional 'acting chops' I'd say...
you should contact his people...he did say he wanted to meet someone with it.
Yeah, it is a real thing. Most people don’t realize they may be on the spectrum of this until they actually hear a out it. I only heard about it maybe ten or so years ago, and it made me think back to all the times I wasn’t able to recognize people that I otherwise should. If I see someone I know in a place that I don’t expect to see them and they acknowledge me, I have to really think hard about who that person is. It’s weird sometimes. It’s not debilitating, but it’s kind of weird. If I know a person very well, it’s not a problem, but if I haven’t seen a person in a long time and run into them at a concert or something, I have to really strain my memory to grab clues and try to put the face to a name again.