Time to face the music

Source: Here's Why We Tend to See Faces Everywhere We Look, According to Science

We know that our minds can imagine faces everywhere there's a hint of two eyes and a nose – from cloud formations to car bonnets to plug sockets – and it's technically known as face pareidolia. A new study gives us insight into what's actually going on in the brain when this happens.

Scientists wanted to know whether the brain processes these imagined faces in the same way as real human faces – and it turns out there are some similarities in how we perceive and interpret them.

The research suggests that false faces found through pareidolia are assessed in the same way as a real face would be. Somehow, the same neural circuitry is involved in figuring out what a face is doing, even though we know that what we're looking at in a tree stump or a TV remote isn't a real face.

"We know these objects are not truly faces, yet the perception of a face lingers," says psychologist David Alais, from the University of Sydney in Australia.​

Fun read.

Bob Wilson