Do I Know You?: A Faceblind Reporter's Journey Into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination

By: Dingfelder, Sadie

Book Overview

An award-winning science writer discovers she has prosopagnosia (face blindness) and aphantasia (the inability to visualize) and investigates the neuroscience of sight, memory, and imagination--while solving some long-running mysteries about her own life.

Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she's a little quirky. But while she's made some strange mistakes over the years, it's not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (whom she thinks is her husband) that she realizes something is amiss.

With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical. She has prosopagnosia (faceblindness), stereoblindness, aphantasia (an inability to create mental imagery), and a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory.

As Dingfelder begins to see herself more clearly, she discovers a vast well of hidden neurodiversity in the world at large. There are so many different flavors of human consciousness, and most of us just assume that ours is the norm. Can you visualize? Do you have an inner monologue? Are you always 100 percent sure whether you know someone or not? If you can perform any of these mental feats, you may be surprised to learn that many people--including Dingfelder--can't.

A lively blend of personal narrative and popular science, Do I Know You? is the story of one unusual mind's attempt to understand itself--and a fascinating exploration of the remarkable breadth of human experience.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316545147
• ISBN13: 9780316545143
• Release Date: June 2024
• Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Awesome book very funny

Very funny and full of science that I didn't know before. In the vein of Bill Bryson or AJ Jacobs. Great book and great gift to give!

Explained learning differences I’ve had all my life. Not only face blindness

This book starts with her own face blindness and tests she had to diagnose it but all sorts of other ways many of us have different ways of thinking- including how eyes work .