Man Suffers Rare Medical Condition, Sees Faces Of Others Distorted Like Demons

A man in the US state of Tennessee has been diagnosed with prosopometamorphopsia, an extremely rare neurological disorder that makes other people’s faces appear severely distorted.

59-year-old Victor Sharrah says he always had a sharp vision, but things changed in November 2020.

RESEARCH GATE

My vision changed one day

“I just woke up and was sitting on the couch watching TV when my roommate came into the room, and (looking at him) I’m like, ‘What am I seeing?’ Then his girlfriend walked in and her face was the same,” Sharrah told CNN.

“My first thought was I woke up in a demon world. You can’t imagine how scary it was,” he said.

What he was seeing?

According to him, all of a sudden, people’s faces around him looked demonic with their ears, noses and mouths stretched back, and there were deep grooves in their foreheads, cheeks and chins.

The Lancet

“I tried to explain to my roommate what I was seeing, and he thought I was nuts. Then I went outside and all of the faces of people I saw were distorted and still are,” he said.

What is?prosopometamorphopsia

He was later diagnosed with prosopometamorphopsia or PMO, an extremely rare condition that has only been recorded 75 times in the past 100 years.

Sharrah's prosopometamorphopsia diagnosis, however, helped scientists to learn more about the medical condition.

Researchers recreate what he sees

Based on inputs from Sharrah, Researchers at Dartmouth College created a digital representation of what people suffering from PMO are experiencing. The resulting images were published recently in The Lancet.

The Lancet

"We hope this has a big impact in the way people think about PMO, especially for them to be able to understand how severe PMO can be,” psychologist Ant?nio Mello who led the study said.

Previously it was believed that PMO symptoms resolve after a few days or weeks, but in the case of Sharrah, he says he still sees demonic faces.

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