Scary experience! Has this happened to anyone?

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I did not read the entire thread but as a response to the original post, that happens to me sometimes too.

No problems visually recognizing people, just a problem coming up with the name, as in Hi ____________ ? Doh!

yeah, i'd say this happens to me a lot. I had 2 housemates for 3 months before I worked out which name matched which person. this was before i knew about aspergers etc, but its very similar to what you described. Matching names to faces never works to me. I match topics to names. The guy i was talking to about motorbikes on the weekend, his name is mark. if i was to meet him again, i wouldnt remember who he was without cues like, him talking about his harley. this is just how life is and i try and do my best to work around it.

Thanks, guys. I am working on getting in to see a neurologist, even though I don't currently have insurance, and I need a physician referral. I know what is normal for my brain, and what is not. :-\ I was hoping that people on here have had that same brain glitch with an in-context acquaintance, but it seems like most of the posts deal with more general prosopagnosia.

I hope that your appointment goes well and that there is nothing but good news, Eunice. The brain does sometimes show slight suffering in cognitive function when it is stressed; this could just be a case of mental fatigue.

I've done this, too. In fact, I once failed to recognize my own mother (granted, I had not seen her for five years and her hair was radically different), and I still cannot match names to faces of more than half of my aunts and uncles (though my father is one of thirteen children). When it comes to all of my cousins...

This mild face-blindness makes meeting up with acquaintances even more nerve-racking than it'd usually be; "Is that....is that them? No, that's not...is it?"

Oh, I've disappointed so many people with the "Do you remember me?" "...nope, sorry" sequence.

I frequently have this experience recognizing places, even familiar places, but not people. I get disoriented all the time out of nowhere, but that always happens to me. If this is out of the ordinary for you, I would consider speaking to your doctor about it, especially if it happens again.

People have that kind of shutdown all the time. Even normal people!

Huh. I may have discovered one similiarity between me and them.

I only recently learned about prosopagnosia and I had the impression that it is a more or less constant condition. I can sometimes recognize people and at other times not. If that is consistent with prosopagnosia, then that is what I have, otherwise I have no idea what it is, I just know that it is like prosopagnosia but intermittent.

Because as a psychology student you learn about prosopagnosia as being quite different than the inability to recognize someone. It's the inability to recognize a face as a face. The name of the article that stuck in my head when first learning about it was 'Man who mistook his wife's face for a hat' or something quite similar. Have you ever mistaken a person's face for an inanimate object? No? Then it's not prosopagnosia.

That said, I definitely understand why someone would think to call it prosopagnosia. One of the first things I recalled asking my aspie bf, when we was talking about not seeing the forest for the trees, was if he would describe the inability to see a forest as a type of agnosia.

Agnosia, in general, is the complete total inability to perceive things as wholes, despite having perfectly normal sensory input. So, for instance, someone who has an agnosia won't ever feel like something suddenly becomes too bright or loud or that they want to get away due to sensory overload like someone with ASD, or at least if they do it's not because of agnosia. The reason I bring this up is that, from what I can tell, sensory overload is likely caused by the same thing that causes this deficit in recognition as well as more attention to detail.

Importantly, as has already been said, in agnosia it's a consistent deficit that's always present, and is usually due to some sort of brain trauma. And it's far more severe and totally unfunctional compared to what people here have said.

When I meet someone 'out of context' it's quite common for me to have problems placing them. Now that I have gray hair I blame it on my old age, just to lighten up the situation because the person is sometimes concerned I'm brain damaged. As to people at work looking alike, there were two women at work I couldn't tell apart until one finally changed her hairstyle quite dramatically. Never spoke to them, just saw them walking by so I didn't embarrass myself that time. I've also learned to not try and remember how they're doing, I had one bloke at death's door when he was quite well and it was someone else I had mistaken him for.

This has only happened to me once. My girlfriend and I were at a train station and on that particular day it was the last place I would have expected to see one of her house mates who, for one thing, we assumed would be at work. We both heard my girlfriends name so we spun around and for about 3 or 4 seconds I knew I knew the face but I guess because she 'wasn't supposed to be there' my brain took a few seconds to realise 'Ah, it's Megan'. It didn't really disturb me. After we chatted for a second then parted ways I actually laughed trying to explain it to my girlfriend. Sounds like it might have something to do with the spectrum though and not alzheimer's. Just make sure you get a bit of exercise every other day and keep your mind busy with quizzes, art, reading, cross words, maybe try a new language for fun. Anything to keep the brain flexing like a muscle