Scientists at Dartmouth College in the United States have found that COVID-19 can cause impairments in the ability to recognize faces, as well as provoke difficulties with navigation. This is reported in an article published in the journal Cortex.

SARS-CoV-2 is known to cause a number of neurological problems, including loss of smell and taste, as well as impaired attention, memory, speech and language, which are known as "brain fog". In a new paper, experts described a case of prosopagnosia, or facial blindness, in a 28-year-old woman named Annie, who worked as a portrait painter. The patient said that she lost the ability to recognize the faces of her family members, and also could not remember the location of departments in the grocery store. The combination of both symptoms indicates brain damage or developmental deficiency in adjacent areas of the temporal lobe of the cerebral hemispheres.

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In one test, Annie was shown 60 pictures of celebrities in sequence and asked to name them. After that, she was presented with a list of celebrities who appeared in the test to determine if she knew them. Annie correctly identified 29 percent of the 48 celebrities she knows. That being said, most people can correctly identify 84 percent of the celebrities they know.

The woman's more limited ability to remember and recognize faces was confirmed using the Cambridge test, in which the subject was first shown the faces of six men and then asked to distinguish them from other faces. On average, people correctly identify 80 percent, while the patient was only able to identify 56 percent. Test scores for recognition, face perception, and object recognition were normal, indicating problems with memory for faces rather than more general impairments.

In a study of 54 people who had COVID-19 with symptoms lasting 12 weeks or more, one common cognitive problem was found to be related to difficulty recognizing the faces of family members and friends. Thus, the authors conclude, prosopagnosia may be a common consequence of infection, and further research should be conducted to reduce its impact on patients' quality of life.