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Do you often have the illusion that there is a human-like face on every object around you? For example, in the picture below, the mouth is open as if to say,"ah? "Lighter sound... accidentally found these dull or strange face, always scare you. Of course, you're not alone!

Have you ever seen these "faces"?| Imgur, the phenomenon of seeing objects as structures resembling faces, was once thought to be a psychotic symptom caused by visual perception errors, but as research continued, scientists called it face pareidolia.

In the 1970s, NASA's Viking 1 space probe photographed Sedonia in the northern hemisphere of Mars and unexpectedly found a very interesting photo. The hill in the photo not only has two symmetrical holes like eyes, but also nose and mouth-like protrusions and depressions, just like a human face. The discovery of a human-like face on Mars has drawn attention from groups that believe in alien life, arguing that the "face" is evidence that life once existed on Mars.

However, this illusion is not only found in humans, and previous studies have shown that similar illusion has been found in primates such as macaques.

First look: very strange! Take another look: it's still weird!| Wikipedia So the question arises, why do we make a simple patchwork of two circles and a straight line on an object look like a human face? Cognitive scientists believe that our brains have an internal template for faces, and that seeing something that fits that template activates the brain's regions involved in face recognition.

To test this, the researchers showed 96 subjects pictures of faces, fake faces and objects and used magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the neural mechanisms that occur in the brain when the subjects see different pictures. We found that fusiform face recognition areas and occipital face recognition areas, object recognition areas in the lateral occipital lobe, and scene recognition areas in the parahippocampal gyrus were all unusually active when people looked at fake faces. The brain's visual mechanisms and responses to fake faces are the same as when people are faced with real faces.

At the same time, the researchers also found that when people saw pictures of fake faces, MEG activity patterns were initially extremely close to MEG activity in real Face Recognition, but over time, MEG activity caused by fake faces tended to coincide with MEG activity caused by pictures of objects. In other words, the brain will mistake it for a face in a very short time, find out that it has a wrong judgment of a face in a certain time, and then quickly correct it in a short time.

Huh? Really? My jaw dropped!| Imgur Although the fake faces themselves have no biological gender, the researchers found that people are more likely to identify fake faces as male than female when comparing gender judgments made when they see fake faces. Both men and women were four times more likely to identify fake faces as male than female. When the researchers changed the images to black and white, the proportion of gender associations remained unchanged.

Dr Colin Palmer, from the University of South Wales School of Psychology, also found that our brains react emotionally to fake faces we find in inanimate objects. That is, we not only recognize a face, but we analyze who it looks like and what emotion it's conveying to us-crying, angry? Or looking at you with contempt. Wait.

Mama! They're staring at me!| This emotional response to fake faces affects every corner of our lives. In 2006, for example, the Wall Street Journal reported that sales of "cuter" cars, such as the Beetle, were declining. Designers decided to take advantage of research that found consumers tended to prefer cars that looked "fierce."

The Dodge Charger, for example, is designed with thin, slanted headlights that make it look threatening. Chrysler designer Ralph Gilles said,"Headlights look like eye contact. If a car has a very mean face and threatening eyes, the oncoming driver will be anxious or more aggressive. "

What expression do you prefer on a car?| Imgur So why did the long evolutionary history of humans leave behind such a response mechanism that is close to a brain bug?

In fact, in ancient times, being able to quickly and accurately spot faces helped our ancestors to spot predators and threats in a very short time and escape in time to survive. Nowadays, a lot of Face Recognition is also very important for us. You need to know who the other person is, whether they are family friends or enemies, and what their intentions and emotions are.

Therefore, sometimes the brain overreacts and often misreads the objects around it for the small bugs of adult faces.

(Source: Gifer) Cover Source: Imgur

References:

[1]Wardle, S.G., Taubert, J., Teichmann, L. et al. Rapid and dynamic processing of face pareidolia in the human brain. Nat Commun 11, 4518 (2020).

[2]Colin J. Palmer et al. Face Pareidolia Recruits Mechanisms for Detecting Human Social Attention, Psychological Science (2020). DOI: 10.1177/0956797620924814

[3]Taubert, J., Wardle, S. G., Flessert, M., Leopold, D. A. & Ungerleider, L. G. Face pareidolia in the rhesus monkey. Curr. Biol. 27, 2505-2509.e2 (2017).

[4]Taubert, J. et al. Amygdala lesions eliminate viewing preferences for faces in rhesus monkeys. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 115, 8043-8048 (2018).

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Bring Science Home (ID: steamforkids), Author: Everything

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