A 62-year-old woman is providing new insights into how the human brain works after becoming the first person to be diagnosed with a condition that leaves her unable to recognise voices.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
The successful British businesswoman, who is normal in every other way, is the first known case of someone being born with developmental phonagnosia, which leaves her unable to recognise even the voices of her own family.
Her condition is so profound that she often avoids using the telephone and struggles to identify people speaking on the radio.
Neuroscientists have now performed a series of tests and brain scans while asking her to listen to a range of recorded voices.
They found that while she was perfectly able to understand what was being said, she was unable to identify a speaker as someone she had been listening to a few minutes earlier. Read more…
