Imagine having prosopagnosia or "face blindness" -- the inability to recognize faces, including those of friends and close relatives. Well, my favorite doctor/author, Oliver Sacks, talks in this week's New Yorker about his struggle with this unusual affliction, which usually results from stroke, traumatic brain injury or certain neurodegenerative diseases, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Throughout his career, Sacks has been fascinated by the brain and perception -- the "mind/brain" interplay -- and he is uncommonly skilled in translating dense scientific issues into terms the general public can understand. One of my favorite books is "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," in which he examined the problems that some people have in perceiving the world around them. You may also remember "Awakenings," which was adapted into a movie starring Robin Williams and Rovert De Niro.

Such bizarre afllictions make for facscinating reading, so I'm looking forward to Sacks' latest book, "The Mind's Eye, scheduled for an Oct. 26 release. A description of the book promises "the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world. And there is Dr. Sacks himself, who tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side."

This article that Sacks wrote in 2003 for The New Yorker -- also titled "The Mind's Eye," may provide a preview.

p.s. If you're curious about prosopagnosia -- and think you might have it -- try these tests.