10
Loading video...
By Jasmine Laws
Reporter
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Following brain surgery, a man has been experiencing unusual distortions in his vision which mean he can see catlike features in human faces, and even humanlike features in his pet cat.
Karl, a 28-year-old man who has a condition called prosopometamorphopsia (also known as PMO), began to experience the distortions after a surgery to remove an arteriovenous malformation (a tangle of arteries and veins that form irregular connections) in the right posterior temporal lobe of his brain, which is the region that plays a central role in face perception.
These distortions include facial features in humans changing to become more like a cat's, for example the shape of their eye changing into catlike sockets and their pupils enlarging. Karl can also see different facial shading and texture on human faces, that can look similar to patches of cat fur.
Read More on Health
Sometimes, Karl can also see the facial features of someone familiar to him appear on his pet cat's face, such as the person's eye shape and pupil size. He can also sometimes see facial features transfer from human to human as well.
...
These distortions started two years ago following the surgery, and they can often last for several hours or sometimes all day, making them a "regular part of his life," Brad Duchaine, one of the experts who wrote the report about Karl's case and a professor at Dartmouth College, told Newsweek.
"Our brains store detailed memories of the faces we know well," he said. "In Karl, those stored features get reactivated and stuck in his face perception system, so they’re blended into whatever face he’s looking at, whether it belongs to a person or his cat."
Duchaine said that while Karl wishes these distortions "didn't occur," he has now "learned to tolerate them." However, he noted that for people with PMO, these distortions can make "social interactions unsettling, and many people with it don’t tell anyone because they worry they won’t be believed or people will think they are suffering from broader psychiatric difficulties."
The report on Karl's case was published in the journal Cortex.
What Is PMO?
Duchaine said that people with PMO "see faces as distorted," meaning that "features may look stretched, shifted, drooping or resized, the skin may change color or texture, and in rare cases, like Karl’s, features from one face show up on another."
He said that the condition usually "follows damage or disruption to brain areas involved in face processing, from stroke, tumor, surgery, epilepsy or head injury, though in many cases we can’t confidently identify a cause."
There is currently no established treatment for PMO, he said, but "we're investigating stimulus manipulations that influence distortions in some cases of PMO."
Also, "when distortions are caused by an underlying condition such as epilepsy or a tumor, treating that condition can reduce the distortions," he said.
How long patients experience distortions also varies.
"For some people, the distortions fade within days or weeks, while for others, like Karl, they last for years," Duchaine said.
Previous Case Of PMO Animal-Human Facial Feature Distortion
Karl's experience comes 40 years after a previous case of animal-human facial feature distortion in a PMO patient. In 1986, a woman who had experienced a stroke nine months earlier was sat on a bus when she looked at a poodle sitting on the lap of another passenger.
When she looked away from the dog, she suddenly saw the dog's facial features mapped onto all the other passengers on the bus, in place of their usual human features.
Even after she got off the bus, the distortion continued until around 30 minutes later.
These facial distortions are rare among patients with PMO, Duchaine noted in the report. It is more common that patients experience distortions that alter the shape and position of facial features, he said, making both this case and Karl's particularly notable.
Duchaine said that over the last five years, around 300 people with face distortions have contacted him and his team through their website (prosopometamorphopsia.faceblind.org). He said they'd like to hear from anyone else who has experienced these distortions to further inform their research on the condition.
Reference
Brad Duchaine, Antônio Mello, Jennifer L. Nosker (2026) Forty years after poodle-face palinopsia: Human-to-cat and cat-to-human facial feature transfer. Cortex. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945226002649
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Kara Dolman and Tony Phillips.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines