3.5
Do I Know You?
ByPublisher Description
An award-winning science writer discovers she has prosopagnosia (face blindness) and aphantasia (the inability to visualize) and investigates the neuroscience of sight, memory, and imagination—while solving some long-running mysteries about her own life.
Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she’s a little quirky. But while she’s made some strange mistakes over the years, it’s not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (whom she thinks is her husband) that she realizes something is amiss.
With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical. She has prosopagnosia (faceblindness), stereoblindness, aphantasia (an inability to create mental imagery), and a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory.
As Dingfelder begins to see herself more clearly, she discovers a vast well of hidden neurodiversity in the world at large. There are so many different flavors of human consciousness, and most of us just assume that ours is the norm. Can you visualize? Do you have an inner monologue? Are you always 100 percent sure whether you know someone or not? If you can perform any of these mental feats, you may be surprised to learn that many people—including Dingfelder—can’t.
A lively blend of personal narrative and popular science, Do I Know You? is the story of one unusual mind’s attempt to understand itself—and a fascinating exploration of the remarkable breadth of human experience.
Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she’s a little quirky. But while she’s made some strange mistakes over the years, it’s not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (whom she thinks is her husband) that she realizes something is amiss.
With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical. She has prosopagnosia (faceblindness), stereoblindness, aphantasia (an inability to create mental imagery), and a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory.
As Dingfelder begins to see herself more clearly, she discovers a vast well of hidden neurodiversity in the world at large. There are so many different flavors of human consciousness, and most of us just assume that ours is the norm. Can you visualize? Do you have an inner monologue? Are you always 100 percent sure whether you know someone or not? If you can perform any of these mental feats, you may be surprised to learn that many people—including Dingfelder—can’t.
A lively blend of personal narrative and popular science, Do I Know You? is the story of one unusual mind’s attempt to understand itself—and a fascinating exploration of the remarkable breadth of human experience.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesDo I Know You? Reviews
3.5
“I typically only read/listen to fiction, but this was a good book. I liked learning some new psychology terms (in school for psychology) and wasn’t written in a boring textbook manner but as her story.”
“This book was so fun and informative! The author came across as funny and charming, even if her stories about driving stressed me the hell out. I learned so much about different conditions and types of neurodivergence that I didn't even know existed before, or didn't know much about. Through learning about these things I even found out that I myself have one of them! I had heard of aphantasia before, but I didn't know it had an opposite condition, hyperphantasia. I have always known I had something weird about my brain when it comes to visualization and memory, but I don't quite fit the criteria for HSAM. Pretty sure after reading this that it's hyperphantasia, which makes so much sense in so many ways. Nifty!
I will forever be baffled that the author and everyone in her life were oblivious to all of these issues she has until she was in her FORTIES, though. Girl, what.”
“Audiobook
Really fascinating to hear the author's perspective of what it is like to have these neurological differences and not know the labels until well into adulthood. Our brains are incredible.”
About Sadie Dingfelder
Sadie Dingfelder is a freelance science journalist. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic, the Washington Post, and Washingtonian magazine. A former staff reporter at the Washington Post Express, Dingfelder also previously served as senior science writer at the Monitor on Psychology magazine, covering new findings in neuroscience, cognitive science, and ethology for members of the American Psychological Association.
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