Monday, December 13, 2004

Um, have we met?

Roger Highfield of the Daily Telegraph writes about a new study that sheds light on how we recognise faces. The study reveals that the fusiform gyrus helps us "pin a single identity to a face", with a little help from the inferior occipital gyri and the anterior temporal cortex.

The author of the study is quoted as saying, "A face that is 60 percent Marilyn Monroe and 40 percent Margaret Thatcher will be identified as an older version of Monroe, while an image which is 40 percent Monroe and 60 percent Thatcher will be seen as the sexier side of Thatcher."

Read the full study, and also check out this rather neat optical illusion, on the same subject.

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