So Strong; yet so calm: Mary's Choice.

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Why It's Perfectly Normal to See Jesus in Toast - Yahoo News

Why It's Perfectly Normal to See Jesus in Toast - Yahoo News: The man in the moon. Jesus in toast. The Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich. Faces are everywhere — even when they're not, strictly speaking, supposed to be.

Now, new research reveals the brain processes that underlie these facial false alarms, a phenomenon called "face pareidolia." The findings suggest that expectations matter.  When people expect to see a face, these expectations may activate a brain region responsible for processing faces.

The neural basis of this phenomenon is less understood.

The results of a study reveals that priming people to look for identifiable objects in random patterns is bound to create a few hits. The participants reported seeing faces 34 percent of the time and letters 38 percent of the time, despite there being none in the images they saw.

Because the researchers asked participants about letters as well as faces, they were able to tease out differences in brain activity associated with mistaken identification of a letter and those associated with mistaken identification of faces. They found those differences in the fusiform face area (FFA), a small region on the side of the brain, behind the ear. This region has long been known to be involved in the recognition of faces, though recent research suggests that it helps people identify the differences between any objects of expertise. A birdwatcher, for example, might use the FFA to tell the difference between a sparrow and a wren.

The finding that the FFA is involved specifically in face pareidolia fits with previous studies, the researchers wrote. It also suggests that the region doesn't just activate in response to actual faces; it also appears to activate in response to people's belief that they have seen a face. In other words, the researchers wrote, people's expectations may have led their brains to find fuzzy patterns that looked face-like, creating a false impression.

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