Rare 'visual disorder' caused a 58-year-old man to see distorted 'demonic' faces: Study

Those who suffer from a rare neurological disorder see the stuff of their nightmares come to life. A condition known as prosopometamorphopsia causes the perception of facial features to be distorted in surreal and terrifying ways, according to Fox News Digital.

A recent study published by the Lancet described how 58-year-old Victor Sharrah saw "demonic" faces for over two years.

The description of the study said:

A 58-year-old man with a 31-month history of seeing peoples’ faces as distorted and, in his words, appearing "demonic" visited our laboratory for assessment. The patient stated that the distortions — severely stretched features of the face, with deep grooves on the forehead, cheeks, and chin — were present on every person's face he encountered, but he reported no distortions when looking at objects, such as houses or cars.

The patient said that even though faces were distorted, he was still able to recognise who they were. Notably, he reported no distortions when viewing facial images on a screen or on paper. The distortions were not accompanied by delusional beliefs about the identities of the people he encountered — such as his family or friends.

A curious element to the man's experience is that he didn't appear to see the strange distortions while looking at two-dimensional faces on paper or digital screens. And despite experiencing the distortions, he was still able to recognize the people he was looking at.

Smithsonian magazine reported that Sharrah said, “I tried to explain to my roommate what I was seeing, and he thought I was nuts. Imagine waking up one morning and suddenly everybody in the world looks like a creature in a horror movie.”

The report mentioned that researchers from Dartmouth College showed the 58-year-old man images of an individual on a screen and then had him compare the image with the individual's real face.

After the man described the key differences he experienced, researchers used computer software to edit the image to capture what he was really seeing.

Antonio Mello, a Ph.D. student in psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth, said, "Through the process, we were able to visualize the patient’s real-time perception of the face distortions."

Dr. Jonathan Tiu, a neurologist and assistant professor of neurology at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine in New Jersey, was not involved with the study but suggested the study was "fascinat[ing]."

"This suggests that the brain's way of visually ‘displaying’ faces, and the brain's ability to recognize a person's face, might be occurring in two different parts of the brain."

Experts don't know how people come to experience PMO, and it's still uncertain who may be likely to experience such a terrifying diagnosis. Fewer than 100 cases have been reported since 1904, and some doctors have never even heard of PMO.

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