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

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

An award-winning science writer discovers she's faceblind 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 (face blindness), 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. "The zippy prose and humor will keep readers turning pages...Readers will be enlightened and charmed in equal measure." - Publishers Weekly "A spry memoir of life in a whirlwind of neurodiversity...A lucid explanation of how we experience the world and each other." - Kirkus Reviews "Dingfelder's writing is funny, poignant, philosophical and almost euphoric. The memoir is a beautiful reminder that our inner lives are not uniform. None of us can possibly know what it feels like to be someone else, but as Dingfelder shows, it's fun to try." - Science News "At heart, this is a memoir—a coming-out story about learning you are part of a community, that you deserve accommodation, that you can practice radical self-love." - Wall Street Journel I thought that I knew myself. Boy I was I wrong. It all started when I mistook a random guy at the grocery store for my husband. That awkward moment launched a full-blown nerdy midlife crisis, sending me on a cross-country journey from UC Berkeley to Harvard's neuroscience labs. Along the way, I uncovered truths about my brain (including the fact that I have prosopagnosia, or face blindness) that shook me to my core, forcing me to rethink my entire life and mourn losses I didn't even know I had. And what I discovered about how all of our brains work? Mind-blowing. Millions of tiny miracles happening every second, shaping the way we see, remember, and imagine the world. Join me on this journey into the brain's inner workings, where we'll dive into the mysteries of vision, memory, and imagination. You might just realize that your own inner world is more extraordinary than you ever knew. Sadie Dingfelder is a freelance science journalist. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic , the Washington Post , and Washingtonian magazine. A former staff reporter at the Washington Post Express , Dingfelder also previously served as senior science writer at the Monitor on Psychology magazine, covering new findings in neuroscience, cognitive science, and ethology for members of the American Psychological Association.