Victor Sharrah has always been a social person, but over the past three years, he has found himself more withdrawn.
Indeed, since waking up one day in November 2020, Sharrah, 59, has seen people’s faces distorted or, as he says, like “demons”.
“I woke up one morning like this and I freaked out,” Sharrah told USA TODAY.
Sharrah is one of the few people in the world with prosopometamorphopsia, or PMO, a rare condition that causes a person to see very stretched features with deep grooves on the forehead, cheeks and chin, according to a study recently published in The Lancet. .
Terrified by what was happening, he messaged a support group he was part of for bipolar disorder.
“This woman came back to me and she said, ‘I can explain to you what’s going on if you give me five minutes and give me your phone number,'” Sharrah recalls.
Searching for answers and terrified, Sharrah answered the call, and it would bring her some relief.
“It was scary. I was ready to get hired. I thought I really blew my lid,” Sharrah said.
How rare is PMO?
According to a website about this rare disease, there have only been about 75 confirmed cases of people with PMO.
The disease varies from person to person but is characterized by distortion of faces, including features appearing droopy, smaller, larger, stretched or in a different position, the website says.
It’s not fully understood what causes someone to suffer from PMO, but according to the study, some cases could be linked to head trauma, stroke, epilepsy or migraine.
Sharrah said he suffered a head injury 17 years ago that required him to be hospitalized. In 2007, while working as a long-distance driver, his trailer door became stuck. As he tried to unlock the handle, he fell backwards and hit his head on the concrete.
According to the study, head trauma is a possible explanation for Sharrah’s mandate. The other is carbon monoxide poisoning, which Sharrah suffered from just four months before her symptoms appeared.
Additionally, MRI scans revealed a lesion in the hippocampus of his brain.
Researchers create visualization of Sharrah distortions
According to the study, PMO usually means faces appear constantly distorted. However, in Sharrah’s case, the distortions only occurred when he looked at someone in real life – not in photographs or on a computer screen.
This allowed researchers to create visuals to try to understand the distortions Sharrah observed.
“Through this process, we were able to visualize the patient’s perception of facial distortions in real time,” said lead author Antônio Mello, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth University. in an article published by the university.
The researchers took a photo of a person and then showed that image to Sharrah on a computer screen. He would then look at the person’s face in real life and explain to the researchers the differences he saw compared to the photo on the screen. This information was then used to create altered images to match what Sharrah described.
Although the images give an idea of what Sharrah is seeing, he said they don’t tell the whole story of the actual trauma of the experience.
“I mean, the facial features move with them. I don’t know how to say it. It’s like, it’s like talking to a character in an episode of Star Trek,” he explained.
Raise awareness
Sharrah said he has spoken publicly about his experience with PMO, hoping to raise awareness and help anyone else who may be experiencing these symptoms and is unsure of what is happening to them.
“It blew up way more than my expectations. It’s a little overwhelming but exciting at the same time to think that maybe this is going to help someone,” he said.
According to the study, it is not uncommon for a person with PMO to be misdiagnosed.
“Many people with PMO have told us that they were diagnosed by psychiatrists as having schizophrenia and taken antipsychotics, even though their condition was a visual system problem,” Brad Duchaine, author of the study, and said the principal investigator of the Social Perception Lab at Dartmouth University.
Sharrah said the most important thing for him is “to get the message out so that people are not institutionalized and treated for psychosis while they have vision dysfunction.”
News Source : www.usatoday.com
Gn Health
