A science journalist mistakes a stranger for her husband and decides to take a deep dive into her own brain. NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe talks to Sadie Dingfelder about her new book, “Do I Know You?”
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
One day, Sadie Dingfelder had an epiphany in the supermarket. She saw her husband with a jar of brand name peanut butter. That hypocrite had just extolled the virtues of homemade nut butters, so he snatched it out of her hands. Only that wasn’t her husband. How did Sadie Dingfelder mistake a stranger for her husband and why? To find out, the freelance science journalist took a deep dive into her own brain. Her book is “Do I Know You?” And Sadie Dingfelder joins us now. Welcome to the show.
SADIE DINGFELDER: Thank you for having me.
RASCOE: Before we got into the science of your brain, you always knew you were a little quirky. Can you explain what it’s like to be inside your head?
DINGFELDER: Yeah, I had no idea, but it turns out that my experience of human consciousness is quite unusual. I don’t have an internal monologue. I can’t visualize anything. I can’t mentally time travel to moments in my past and I can’t distinguish between faces very well.
RASCOE: You can’t visualize anything. So if I said visualize a beach right now, nothing comes to mind?
DINGFELDER: Nothing. And I never realized other people could do it.
RASCOE: (Laughter) The thing is, you don’t grow up knowing that you’re having a very different experience than other people. You thought maybe you were bad with faces.
DINGFELDER: Correct. That is the secret message of the title of my book. It’s “Do I know you?” because it turns out that your husband, your best friend, your boss… may be having a completely different conscious experience than you, and may have completely different perceptions than you, even though we all live in the same objective environment.
RASCOE: So you decided to find out why you have so many problems with faces. Exactly how many scientific studies did you sign up for?
DINGFELDER: I know I’ve worked with five different teams of researchers across the country. I should have counted the number of published studies I’ve been in by now.
RASCOE: So what did you discover about your brain?
DINGFELDER: Well, it turns out that all humans have something called the fusiform facial area or FFA, which is an almond-shaped piece of brain matter right above the ears. And my FFA didn’t get the neural pruning it needed when I was a baby. As a result, it is too thick. And that’s why I didn’t learn to specialize in human faces or other more neurotypical babies.
RASCOE: OK, so that was a lot of big words. So there’s this area in your brain…
DINGFELDER: Yes.
RASCOE: …That as you get older, it gets thinner…
DINGFELDER: Yes.
RASCOE: …To concentrate a little, and yours didn’t.
DINGFELDER: Exactly. And you know, what’s really interesting about this fusiform area of the face is that it appears to contain a very basic face template. Fetuses that are pretty on the larger side, if you will, shine lights, two dots above a line on the mother’s stomach, the fetus will focus on the face-like pattern and follow it, and will not focus in a reverse pattern. face pattern. And what I learned is that it’s not so much that I’m bad with faces, but that most humans are amazingly good. Most humans have an almost photographic memory for faces. And not for other types of objects. Like he shows you a shell and then puts it in a row like 20 minutes later. You’d probably have a lot of trouble telling it apart. But you can do it with a face, no problem.
RASCOE: You also discovered in the book that monkeys do something similar…
DINGFELDER: (Laughter).
RASCOE: …But with cylinder heads.
DINGFELDER: Yes. Monkeys can distinguish their friends from their enemies by their… it’s called the anal-genital region. But yes, monkeys are basically differentiated by their butts. Although they can also distinguish it by faces. They can do both. Humans can only make faces. And they tried it. Someone tried this.
RASCOE: (Laughter) Not only did you discover that you had face blindness, but you also discovered other things about yourself.
DINGFELDER: Yeah. So once I found out I was blind and I accepted it, which took a minute, I thought, but why am I blind? Because for most people it’s genetic, but I couldn’t find anyone in my family who was also blind. So I think I traced it back to the fact that I’m also stereoblind, meaning I don’t see in three D, which is something I knew about myself but hadn’t really thought through. before. But my world is experientially much flatter than most people’s world. And that’s why I can’t catch a Frisbee or get stressed out driving.
RASCOE: Oh, my God. It seems like with all these things, you’re realizing that you have them now, but you’ve had them your whole life. What strategies did you realize you had been using to compensate for the way your brain works?
DINGFELDER: As a journalist, what I do is, right at the top of every notepad, I’ve always written, write down sensory details. Because if I walk into a situation and I talk to scientists and I see their lab, I’m going to remember the big picture, but I’m not going to remember what it smelled like, what it sounded like, the color of the carpet. . I mean, there are definitely some distinct disadvantages to being a blind journalist. I have some funny stories of not recognizing people I just interviewed. But on the plus side, I have a lifetime of experience, like making a quick connection with a stranger because I’m curious about them. I’m curious to know if he maybe a good friend of mine or a stranger.
RASCOE: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
RASCOE: With this book, when you read it, you start to think, do I have any of this? I see the world in 3D now, but I feel like when I drive I can’t tell how far things are from me.
DINGFELDER: Yes.
RASCOE: Tell me, if I’m trying to parallel park, it’ll take me like 20, 30 minutes, and I’ll keep stopping and say, I know I’m close this time, and I’m still like five feet away. Do you know what that is? Is there a name for that?
DINGFELDER: Yeah. I mean, all of these things are on a spectrum, and it turns out I’m actually locating the other side of the spectrum. Now I’m stereo blind, but you can definitely have stereo deficiency. It’s very common.
RASCOE: Oh. OK.
DINGFELDER: People don’t realize that vision is not just about acuity. It’s also about evaluating depth. If you go to the optometrist, they can give you a test and you can find out. And also, you can improve it. I had to try these new therapies, barely approved by the FDA, found in virtual reality glasses where you play video games, to improve your stereo. And mine improved a lot. And I put a key in my door on the first try for the first time in my life.
RASCOE: But then I’m afraid that if I go in and try to see if I’m diagnosing, they say, you’re totally fine, does that mean I’m a bad driver?
DINGFELDER: Yes.
RASCOE: Okay.
(LAUGHTER)
RASCOE: Well, then that’s the question. Do you want to have the diagnosis or do you not want to have the diagnosis? Do you think it is better to know or not know?
DINGFELDER: You know, I’ve been going back and forth on this several times, but I’ve landed, it’s better to know. And most people who are blind find that this allows them to see their lives with sudden clarity. It’s almost like putting on glasses because suddenly all these mysteries you’ve always wondered about fall into place. For example, I had a good friend who I thought had moved between middle school and high school, and it turned out she only had bangs, so…
RASCOE: Okay (laughter). You just… didn’t recognize her anymore and she thought you were being distant.
DINGFELDER: Yes, yes. It’s a little tragic and also a little funny.
RASCOE: What is your relationship with your brain today? Do you appreciate your brain for being unique and peculiar? Are you resentful? Have you made peace with everything?
DINGFELDER: Oh, I’m amazed not only by my brain, but by everyone’s brains. Even when they’re not working at full capacity, the amount of calculations and the like, physics and all these calculations that your brain is constantly doing behind the scenes, it’s like a miracle per second. And I love learning more about the brain because it really makes you appreciate that you have this three-pound wonder in your skull that we all take for granted.
RASCOE: That Sadie Dingfelder. Her book is “Do I Know You?: A Blind Journalist’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination.” Thank you so much.
DINGFELDER: Thank you. It was great talking to you, Ayesha.
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