1. For over 50 years, a woman in the Netherlands lived with a terrifying condition. Whenever she looked at someone's face—friends, family, coworkers—it would slowly warp into something unrecognizable, with black scales, elongated snouts and giant, glowing eyes in shades of red, green, or yellow. Their faces would transform into dragons. Not once in a while. Every day. As a child, she thought everyone saw the same thing. As a teenager, she realized they didn't. By adulthood, the hallucinations had grown so disruptive that they interfered with basic social interaction. It wasn't until she was 52 that she finally went to a psychiatric clinic in The Hague. Doctors ran the usual tests, and everything appeared normal. However, an MRI revealed brain lesions. The damage wasn't new, but it was enough to short-circuit how her brain processed faces. Doctors diagnosed her with prosopometamorphopsia, a rare neurological condition that distorts facial features, and she was successfully treated with a medication switch from valproic acid to rivastigmine, which significantly reduced her symptoms. Experts believe her visual cortex may have developed abnormally, possibly due to oxygen deprivation around the time of birth. But with treatment at least she was able to lead a somewhat normal life. Have you ever heard of this extremely rare condition?
