On a cold winter morning three years ago, Victor Sharrah woke up to find his roommate entering the bathroom. However, when Sharrah looked at his friend’s face, he was startled to see it appear distorted, resembling “devil faces.” In Sharrah’s eyes, his friend’s mouth and eyes seemed elongated, his ears sharp, and deep wrinkles lined his forehead. In reality, his friend’s face remained unchanged, but a syndrome had altered Sharrah’s perception. He was extremely frightened as similar experiences occurred when he looked at the faces of others.
“I tried to explain to my roommate what I saw, and he thought I was crazy,” Sharrah shared. “Imagine waking up one morning and suddenly everyone in the world looks like characters from a horror movie.”
Sharrah, now 59 and residing in Clarksville, Tennessee, was diagnosed with prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), an extremely rare neurological disorder that distorts the human face. Since 1904, fewer than 100 cases of this condition have been recorded, and many doctors have never heard of it. However, Sharrah’s case could raise awareness of this mysterious syndrome and provide insights into the lives of PMO patients. For the first time, researchers were able to create digital simulations of distorted faces as perceived by PMO patients like Sharrah and published their findings in The Lancet on March 23, according to Smithsonian.
The faces only deform when Sharrah looks directly at people. When he views faces in photos or on computer screens, they appear entirely normal. This difference allowed researchers to use photo editing software to recreate what Sharrah sees. They did this by showing Sharrah a photo of a person’s face while that person stood in the room with him. As he described the differences between the photo and the real person, the research team adjusted the image until it matched Sharrah’s description.
Unveiling the Mystery of a Rare Syndrome: People Seeing ‘Devil Faces’
Symptoms of PMO vary significantly from person to person. Faces can appear sunken, blurry, or have peculiar patterns, and specific features can shift to other areas of the face. When looking in the mirror, the patient’s own face may appear distorted. Therefore, while digitally altered images represent what Sharrah sees when looking at people’s faces, they may not match the experiences of other PMO patients. However, the images are invaluable in helping people understand the type of distortion patients may see, according to Jason Barton, a neurologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, who was not involved in the study.
Doctors often mistake PMO for psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia or psychotic disorders. While there may be some overlap in symptoms, a significant difference is that PMO patients do not perceive the real world as distorted; they are aware that their perception is different, according to co-author of the study Antônio Mello, a cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist at Dartmouth College.
“Many people are hesitant to mention the symptoms because they fear others will think the distortions are signs of mental disorder,” said Brad Duchaine, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Dartmouth College. For many people, PMO symptoms disappear within days or weeks. However, for some, like Sharrah, they can last for many years.
Researchers are still unsure what causes PMO, although it is suspected to result from issues in the brain’s facial processing areas. Some PMO patients develop the condition after a stroke, infection, tumor, or head injury, while others experience it spontaneously without a clear explanation.
For Sharrah, four months before the symptoms began, he suffered carbon monoxide poisoning. Over a decade earlier, he sustained a severe head injury when he fell backward and hit his head on the floor. However, in his case, adjusting the light’s color tone to a specific green hue would help him see the actual faces.
Researchers hope the new study will help doctors accurately diagnose PMO. They also hope the research findings will help PMO patients feel less isolated.