Prosopometamorphopsia (PMO) is a rare psychological disorder in which a person sees people's faces as disfigured and "demon-like", meaning: drawn-in eyes, large ears and large wrinkles on the forehead, cheeks and beard.
One day, in November 2020, Victor Sharrah woke up and noticed that he was in a "demonic world", where people's faces had unusual features (described above). The 59-year-old from Clarksville, Tennessee, described the experience as terrifying.
In fact, he was seeing some distortions, which are caused by an extremely rare neurological disorder known as prosopometamorphopsia. In his case, he could see people with normal features through phone or computer screens.
This allowed scientists to study the case. The results of the study were recently published in The Lancet, a medical journal, and for the first time, researchers created these rare distortions in the form of photos.
What do you need to know about PMO?
There are reportedly less than 100 published case reports of PMO, and scientists still don't fully understand what causes it. However, they suspect it is caused by dysfunction in the brain's network that deals with face processing. Distortions can vary from case to case, with other people reporting seeing people with drooping or fixed eyes, and others reporting seeing "witch-like" features.
Unlike a person who experiences hallucinations due to a mental disorder, a person with PMO is aware that what they are seeing is a distortion or that something is wrong with their vision.
