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Our brains are exquisitely tuned to perceive, recognize and remember faces. We can easily find a friend’s face among dozens or hundreds of unfamiliar faces in a busy street. We look at each other’s facial expressions for signs of appreciation and disapproval, love and contempt. We carefully select the images to go with our Facebook profiles. And even after we have corresponded or spoken on the phone with somebody for a long time, we are often relieved when we meet him or her in person and are able to put “a face to the name.”
The neurons responsible for our refined “face sense” lie in a brain region called the fusiform gyrus. Lesions or trauma to this brain area result in a rare neurological condition called prosopagnosia, or face blindness. Prosopagnostics fail to identify celebrities, close relatives, and even themselves in the mirror. But even those of us with normal face recognition skills are subject to many illusions and biases in face perception.
This month’s slide show focuses on face illusions and their neural bases.
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17 Comments
Add CommentI think you got the names a little wrong. I don't think it's Oliva and Antonio Torralba but rather Aude Oliva and Antonio Torralba.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is so amazing. I love things that make my brain think without me really thinking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf Mona Lisa had a man's name like, Mana Louis, would everyone to this day believe he was a man? His face is so plane it could be a man...
Dude, I think I might be gay.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo my thoughts are what does it matter if you like a guy or a girl or both, it takes away the big drama society makes about the issue, yeah guys can be pretty too,no big deal about whatever sex you like.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn Yang's Iris illusion, it looked the other way around to me. What, I wonder, does that mean?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiscan any one remembers his face without seeing in any reflective object?...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe faces which we remember are already present in our mind
once we have captured, remembering those faces is mater of activation ,when we come to contact with those faces again we remember those faces again..
To me, the whole Mona Lisa Smile is way overblown...she's just got a face like the baseball player Andruw Jones who almost always looks like he's smiling. And she's anything but hot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"And it may also explain why females in many cultures darken their eyes and mouths with make-up. A made-up face looks more feminine than a fresh face."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiscould it be the other way round? i.e. we perceive the darken eyes/mouth picture as more feminine because of how women put on make-up these days...
"Mooney faces illustrate how little visual information it takes to see a face."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHence the ability to see the Face on Mars!
This is wonderful. I find many similarities between the faces of Mona Lisa and the Indian actress Vidya Balan but I cannot explain why? If you have seen the photos of Vidya Balan you will see what I mean.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre certain individuals "better" in face recognition? And if so are there any other related "skills" Marty
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou assert that the only difference is that the "male" face has lower contrast. Wrong! The "male" face is darker. It also has darker nostrils. See what results you get when the complexion of the two faces is equally dark. Darker skin complexion is almost universally associated with men.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a follow-up comment to that posted on 27 October. The "male" picture has darker eyebrows which is associated with maleness. With a darker toned skin the nose seems wider and larger--again a feature associated with maleness. Fair skin, smaller nose, less heavy eyebrows are all associated with femaleness. The lower contrast is not a valid conclusion with so many other relevant variables not held constant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProsopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is the inability to recognize faces, although the ability to discern other objects is intact. Those who suffer from this also have problems interpreting facial displays of emotion and trouble in socialization.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've heard it hypothesized that the Mona Lisa is DaVinci showing his own face in drag... thus the mysterious grin.
What? There are positive images of Toni Blair? Now THEY must be illusions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistwo of them are versions of the same androgynous face. The two images are exactly identical except that the contrast between the eyes and mouth and the rest of the top side of the face to the left of the face on the right.
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two of them are versions of the same androgynous face. The two images are exactly identical except that the contrast between the eyes and mouth and the rest of the top side of the face to the left of the face on the right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<a href="http://www.ezbizdir.com/">Online Business Directory</a>