It's crazy how arthropods evolved faces with the same two-eyes-and-a-mouth pattern as ours completely independently from us. That certainly made things easier for our brains.
You only need 1 mouth. You only need 2 sided symmetry for binocular vision. The eyes are on "top" because it's the position that lets you look at stuff without exposing more than the minimum of yourself. It's not crazy at all. If there's anything you can expect about alien life, it's probably that they will have 1 mouth.
Interesting you mentioned autism; my daughter has level 2 autism and struggles processing faces in several ways, including recognizing people she knows if they change their hair, or very sad/crying. Facemasks were impossibly difficult for her - she no longer saw a face when someone had a mask. Even if I put one on while she watched, she would scream because she no longer knew who I was. We stayed home a lot during pandemic. I have learned so much about how brains work whilst raising her and experiencing how her brain works differently.
Autist here. The Clark Kent phenomenon is real. Back when I was 15 I moved into a new house, and the neighbor saw I played guitar. He let me borrow a Joe Satriani (famous guitarist) CD since I hadn't heard of him at the time. I went inside, ripped the CD to my PC, then went back out to return the CD to my neighbor. There was a guy in sunglasses cleaning out his car. I said to him, "Hey, the guy who was just here let me borrow this CD. Do you know where he went?" He responded "Yeah! That was me!" idk about levels of Autism since I was diagnosed when that wasn't a thing, but I hope your daughter finds the humor in these interactions that I have. They are honestly hilarious to me.
a few years ago someone told me that children are more likely to cross a road when a friendly looking car is approaching bc they assume the car would stop to let them through whereas they would wait if an unfriendly looking car is approaching. idk if there was ever a study on this specific subject or if its just anecdotal evidence but it does make sense
Hmm, Interesting. The Ferrari 550 has a pretty regular grille, but the facelift version, the 575 has what people call a "gaping mouth" grille. A small change but now it looks like a face with an agape mouth.
Or see someone out of context and can’t remember what you know them from. I once saw the woman that worked at the baker’s with her children. I didn’t have a clue where I’d seen her before until the next time I bought bread.
Visual recognition evolved millions of years earlier than speech. Language as we know it is relatively new, so it make sense that we are able to remember something by seeing it rather than by what we name it.
Does that mean when I willfully choose to recognize two dots and a line as a face, then the component parts, then a face again, I am consciously and intentionally directing that data to different geographic regions of my brain?! "Send those signals HERE. Now THERE! Now back again HERE!" That's kinda awesome!
actually, both your basic visual cortex and fusiform face area of the brain are lighting up at the same time, there's another religion in your brain that picks which stream of signals gets prioritized over the other.
@@inkbunnybunny It's more likely that your brain is holding both concepts in your working memory at the same time. Although I have to say, understanding how the brain works is a work in progress, so we don't know everything about it just yet.
06:17. Interestingly, there are many videos around showing reactions of babies to bearded dads who had just shaved their beards. The unmistakable reactions of "who is this dude?" suggest that very early on humans notice facial features.
There is also a condition where u see faces in stuff waayyy more often than other people. I suffer from it and see faces literally EVERYWHERE. even when other people would say they dont see it, it is clear as day to me.
I always saw faces in cars: some have happy faces, and some had the "angry/tough" face. My first car, a 1989 Mercury Grand Marquis, was a fine example of the tough/angry face.
Pareidolia is one of the funniest tricks our brains play on us, honestly. I adore that kind of silly meme where there's a "shocked outlet" or an angry onion. (Obviously the punniest ones are my favorites!)
I love the human brain. Such a wonderful demonstration of how capable we are of doing great things. We are doing it an incredible disservice in a lot of ways.
I remember seeing something about this before. Not seeing faces where there are faces (i.e. false negatives) are WAAAY more detrimental to us as a species than seeing faces where there aren't any (false positives).
I have a lot of trouble remembering faces and names. Even if I've known someone for years, if I run into them in the grocery store, I'll draw a complete blank on who they are. Social situations get extremely stressful for me because I'm constantly worried that I'll introduce myself to someone I've known for years or will have to talk to someone who recognizes me, but whom I don't recognize. I've become very good at faking recognition, but inside I'm always in panic mode trying to remember who this person is that knows me.
I have the same thing. I have to explain myself all the time that it’s not bc I’m rude or that person wasn’t important to me. I just don’t remember faces.
I really like your channel, and your face. :) But what I really like is following along as you explain interesting things in that soothing, compelling manner you have.
The heikegani crab in Japan has a carapace that looks like a human face. Consequently, Japanese fishing crews tend to throw them back, allowing them to live and prosper whereas those crabs without a face are often doomed. (Crabs without a face-isn't that a Billy Idol song?)
SERIOUS QUESTION: is there a similar process in the brain for seeing phallic shapes everywhere -- dried gourds, lattice work on bridges, old trees, fur patterns? And the same question for female parts, above and below. (insert favorite face emoji here for watching to end)
Fun facts, it does this for so many other things. Danger Noodles and other creepy stuff, even Nudity! Some Blind people even respond to emotional expressions on faces that they can't consciously see because that early processing is still working.
And Oliver Hanson, you were the best boy, as my Argos was. I will ever keep this pain of losing him to remind me when I'm at my lowest, why I do all the things I do. He taught me so much that even after all these years I still miss him, and feel the need to tell anyone who lost such a dear friend, that their company will never be lost because they made us who we are. They will forever live in every story we tell about them and every teaching we pass through.
I'm now working on a series photographs of faces in tree trunks. I love pareidolia! And I've seen more than faces. Like these two trees that looked like they were a couple dancing! That's a fairly new project of mine, only a few months old, and I wonder where that will take me. I can already tell my brain is even more responsive to pareidolia than it was when I started, so I'm looking forward to seeing where that will take me.
mojang's devs used this phenomenon when making the observer redstone block! basically, theres a side on the block that detects block updates. players were getting confused as to which side of the block was the detecting side, so the devs put a face-like marking on that side of the block to make it easy for players. @@callyral
When I was a kid my grandparents had some classic furniture with ornaments that looked like faces. Those things freaked me out and I never wanted to be left alone around those. Amazing how our brain works!
Its amazing that such a common yet simple illusion that most brains make are still yet to be fully understood by even the best scientists and researchers :3
As a kid i had a dresser with brass handles that looked like creepy smiling faces. I could see it from the bottom of the stairs when i'd go to bed every night. Scared the crap out of me.
Years ago, my father owned one of the caravans at a camping site near a dam. It was about an 80 metre hike to the toilets, and there was this one tree that looked like E.T.'s face.
This is really interesting that people like smiling cars better than aggressive looking ones. I like trains and always see faces in them, and my favourite is the round, cute Series 0 shinkansen. Same with airplanes. So I'm glad to know I'm not alone.
Love the channel Joe, keep it up! by the way, I think you really should update your Ultron video. So much as happened with AI since then. Also favorite face😏
Doesn't anyone remember those 3d pictures that were popular in the mid 90's? That you had to cross your eyes just right to see the hidden image. It took me so many attempts until I finally got the right angle. It wasn't that I couldn't see what was front of my face, but I didn't know how to see things initially.
Butterflies worked out "faces" on their wings a long time ago. It's not a new thing. Learning about dogs having the ability to move their eyebrows and wolves not having it is pretty cool.
Our ability to recognize faces so quickly is why horror movies use faces for jump-scares. We see the face and react to the expression faster than we can even consciously process it.
Our brains are wired up to recognise patterns and sometimes it gets tricked and you see something that may not be exactly what you think you are looking at
7:23 probably not i definitly have the opposite i see faces everywhere i look and i cant stop seeing faces and i can tell the difference between two dogs of the same breed ive never seen before
It's more our perception, and interpretation, of data/visual stimulus. The brain is more the physical hardware, your thoughts are where faces come to life.
The reason the visual cortex is in the rear of the brain is because the rear contains the more archaic structures. They bits that keep us alive and experience the world.
3:32 Vsauce has a really cool video about this. He turned his home town into a giant visual cortex and eyes. It’s worth a watch. It explains everything about how the eyes see and how the brain processes it
Kind of unrelated to this video, but a similar phenomenon that scares the crap out of me is when I "zone out" and think about stuff, then once I get to some random visual image in my head I snap out back into reality, seeing the precise image I last saw in the shape and texture of some random object I was looking at but not paying attention to while I was thinking in my head. Like I am in the bathroom for example thinking about things then I randomly see the shape of an animal or some inanimate object in the texture and contrast of the tile. The human brain is strange I tell you. PS: It just came to me that I sound like a crackhead to anyone with aphantasia who reads this lol
I have prosopagnosia and mistake you for Hank Green until you start talking and I can hear your voice. (: I don't have issues seeing faces on people or objects or being able to figure out emotions. For me it's mostly not being able to recognize individuals.
