A recently resurfaced medical case has intrigued many online. It details the experience of a woman who perceives human faces as transforming into dragon-like features.
The 52-year-old patient, from The Hague, Netherlands, sought help at a psychiatric clinic. During her visit, she explained that while faces began appearing normal, they would soon become distorted after just a few minutes.
- A rare neurological disorder known as PMO causes her to see human faces morph into dragon-like forms.
- An MRI scan revealed brain lesions that may have impacted her ability to process colors and faces.
- Interestingly, she has experienced symptoms of PMO since childhood.
In a publication from 2011, three years later in The Lancet, the woman described how faces would turn black, develop long pointy ears, a protruding snout, and exhibit scales in bright shades of yellow, green, blue, or red.
Moreover, she reported seeing dragon-like faces emerging from walls or electronics, both with and without people present.
Following a series of tests—including a neurological exam, blood samples, and an EEG—doctors found her results were normal. However, the MRI showed several lesions near a specific area in her brain known for processing these visual cues. Damage there is often linked to cognitive issues and has connections to schizophrenia as well as other neurological disorders.
The doctors theorized that these lesions might have led to unusual electrical activity in the part of the brain integral to face and color processing. They speculated that the lesions may have existed from birth, possibly due to a lack of oxygen at or around delivery, according to findings shared in Live Science.
Even though the woman dealt with these symptoms from a young age, they didn’t initially trouble her. It wasn’t until her teenage years that the distortions became more apparent.
The 52-year-old Dutch patient noted that faces initially seemed normal but distorted after a few minutes
Her doctors noted that she had clear insights into the hallucinatory nature of her experiences, referring to them as a “brain disorder.” Following these assessments, she was diagnosed with prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), a highly unusual neurological condition where faces appear distorted in various aspects.
Reports indicate that since 1904, there have been less than 100 documented cases of PMO, and many medical professionals are unfamiliar with the disorder.
Experts believe PMO is likely underreported, as its symptoms are frequently mistaken for schizophrenia or psychosis. One significant distinction, as noted by experts, is that individuals with PMO are aware their perception differs, unlike those who may believe the world is genuinely altered.
Questions linger regarding what precisely triggers this dysfunction in the brain’s facial processing network. While some patients have histories of trauma or other neurological issues, others show no structural changes in their brains.
The patient was diagnosed with PMO, which causes faces to appear distorted
Throughout this period, the patient felt increasingly isolated and struggled with depression and substance use issues. Still, she eventually graduated high school, got married, had a daughter, and found success as a school administrator.
Doctors prescribed her valproic acid to help with her symptoms—it did eliminate her visual distortions but led to new auditory hallucinations, which included loud noises after falling asleep.
Subsequently, they switched her to rivastigmine, a medication typically used for dementia, which helped manage her visual symptoms more effectively and reduced her auditory hallucinations considerably.
After three years of treatment, the patient reported better social interactions and was able to maintain her job.
Doctors theorized that lesions in her brain might have caused abnormal electrical patterns in facial processing areas
Last year, another individual from Tennessee, a 59-year-old man named Victor Sharrah, was diagnosed with PMO. He described how people’s faces appeared demonic to him, with features like ears and mouths stretched bizarrely. He shared his experience with a doctor but felt misunderstood by those around him, stating, “Imagine waking up and suddenly everyone looks like a horror movie character.”
Victor noticed these distortions only in person, seeing faces normally through screens or pictures. He helped create a computer-generated image to represent his perception for research into PMO.
Some potential triggers identified for him include a history of carbon monoxide poisoning and a childhood injury to the left side of his brain.
PMO is often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia or psychosis
Patients with PMO have remarked that faces can appear like animated clocks or kaleidoscopic images. Notably, the 52-year-old patient from The Hague had experienced these dragon-like distortions since childhood, sometimes not realizing they were abnormal.
Comments from the public have ranged from shock to humor, with some dubbing it “Instagram Filter Disorder,” yet the underlying condition remains a serious and often misunderstood neurological issue.
