Introducing the brain: everyone sees faces (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 15, 2020, 22:01 (1348 days ago) @ David Turell

In all sorts of objects:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-brain-everyday.html

"'Face pareidolia' – the phenomenon of seeing faces in everyday objects—is a very human condition that relates to how our brains are wired. And now research from UNSW Sydney has shown we process these "fake" faces using the same visual mechanisms of the brain that we do for real ones.

***

"'This basic pattern of features that defines the human face is something that our brain is particularly attuned to, and is likely to be what draws our attention to pareidolia objects. But face perception isn't just about noticing the presence of a face. We also need to recognize who that person is, and read information from their face, like whether they are paying attention to us, and whether they are happy or upset." (my bold)

"They tested this using the process known as "sensory adaptation," a kind of visual illusion where one's perception is affected by what has recently been seen.

"'If you are repeatedly shown pictures of faces that are looking towards your left, for example, your perception will actually change over time so that the faces will appear to be looking more rightwards than they really are," says Dr. Palmer.

***

"'Our brain has evolved to facilitate social interaction, and this shapes the way that we see the world around us. There is an evolutionary advantage to being really good or really efficient at detecting faces, it's important to us socially. It's also important in detecting predators. So if you've evolved to be very good at detecting faces, this might then lead to false positives, where you sometimes see faces that aren't really there. Another way of putting this is that it's better to have a system that's overly sensitive to detecting faces, than one that is not sensitive enough."

***

"'Understanding face perception is important when you consider conditions or traits like face prosopagnosia, which is the inability to recognize faces, and the autism spectrum, which can include difficulties in reading information from other people's faces, such as their emotional state," Dr. Palmer says. (my bold)

"'And so the longer-term goal of this kind of research is to understand how difficulties in face perception and everyday social functioning can come about."

"Next, the researchers plan to investigate in more detail the specific brain mechanisms involved in 'reading' social information from another person's face, and whether these mechanisms can operate differently in different people."

Comment: The bold parallels my thinking that evolution has developed sense interpretations that help us understand reality when we realize what we see is the result of electrical impulses transmitted over nerves to be interpreted by neurons in a wet environment. The inability to recognize faces, prosopagnosia, in the second bold, reminds us not all brains are normal and this limits the interpretation of our senses when present.