Do I Know You?

A Faceblind Reporter's Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination

By: Sadie Dingfelder

Narrated by: Sadie Dingfelder

An award-winning science writer discovers she’s faceblind 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Sadie Dingfelder (P)2024 Little, Brown & Company

Critic reviews

“Sadie Dingfelder has opened a new window into human neurological diversity, or neurodiversity. She learns about neurodiversity when she discovers she is faceblind. She can see people just fine, but she can’t recognize them. That’s been a problem all her life, and when she is presented with a medical diagnosis—prosopagnosia—she embarks on a voyage of self-discovery that leads her to discover the huge spectrum of human visual processing. The realization that some people see a flat world while others are menaced by three-dimensional objects is stunning. But it doesn’t end there. Digging deeper, she follows psychologists who are unraveling how we think about what we see and how our imaginations and memories are built. It’s a fascinating story that will make you rethink how you see the world.”—John Elder Robison, author of Look Me in the Eye

“It is rare to find a book that makes you laugh out loud while teaching you a great deal of brain science, but Do I Know You? does just that. As Sadie Dingfelder explores her own quirky way of experiencing the world, we all discover the many ways we see, remember, and imagine.”—Susan R. Barry, author of Fixing My Gaze

“Discover Sadie Dingfelder’s World That Lacks Visual Memories. It provides great insight to learn that your thought processes may be totally different from how another person's thought processes work.”—Temple Grandin, author of Visual Thinking

The author’s curiosity keeps you interested from beginning to end

Disclosure: I live in the same town as Sadie Dingfelder and have played music with her. I may not have purchased this book without that connection, but I am certainly glad that I did.

I think this book is for anyone who is curious about neurodivergent brains and how they navigate the world. Even though Sadie focuses on her personal journey in figuring out her own brain, she explores many more related issues around how our brains work and the science that has rapidly advanced with the advent of functional MRIs and other research tools.

The author narrates her own story, and she is an excellent narrator. She brings her empathy, curiosity, and quirky sense of humor to her reading. Her many years as a science journalist gave her special superpowers in investigating the inner workings of her own brain.

I think my biggest takeaway from this book is how much our own experience of the world is likely vastly different from everyone else around us – that our journey and our perception of that journey is so utterly unique that it should no longer surprise anyone that humans don’t always see eye to eye. Listening to this book has instilled in me a greater empathy for those with whom I disagree.

I also found myself in these pages – not with quite the same neurodivergent specialness as Sadie, but with a better understanding of why my life experience may have been off the beaten path compared to those around me. I would actually like to read it again to better understand some of the science that Sadie so eloquently explained.

Super interesting and surprisingly entertaining

I loved the mix of science and humor. Felt like I learned a lot about my own brain.

I don't always love the author reading their own books but this one worked for me.