Human brain has a thing for faces

Published: Dec. 28, 2006 at 9:50 PM
Order reprints
NASHVILLE, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Research at Tennessee's Vanderbilt University has found that the human brain easily remembers faces over other images and won't initially distinguish beauty.

Researcher Isabel Gauthier's studies have found that during the initial few seconds when the human brain recognizes a face, it ignores such concepts as attractiveness, the Nashville Tennessean reported.

Gauthier said that of all possible body parts, the brain is drawn to the face due to its interesting nature.

"As car experts can quickly identify models of cars by shape and birders can call out various species of birds using color, people watchers are drawn to faces," Gauthier said.

The study, which was co-authored by researcher Kim Curby, suggested that the brain can store more faces in memory than other images, and that memory is limited when those faces are upside-down.

"While our results suggest that because experience leads you to encode upright faces in a very efficient manner, when the faces are inverted, we're not so good," Gauthier said. "As odd as it sounds, when you turn the same face upside down, a lot of times we don't recognize it instantly."


© 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.



Puppy transporter charged with cruelty (2 min)
Study: Play ball after shoulder surgery (6 min)
MLB: LA Dodgers 12, Milwaukee 8 (10 inn.) (9 min)
GM considers new car listings on eBay (14 min)
Broken main floods Philly neighborhood (17 min)
MLB: Houston 6, Washington 5 (19 min)
UPI Sports Calendar for Sarurday, July 11 (29 min)
fark
Only the Royals would consider Yuniesky Betancourt a 'major trade'. Second paragraph- 'Betancourt,...
Probably the most spectacularly disturbing suicide you'll read about today
Photoshop these creepy earrings
Patronizing Tijuana hookers while on drugs may be unhealthy, according to Dr. N.S. Sherlock, of...
Defense lawyers request words like "polygamy,""cult" and "compound" not be used in their client's...
TSG Mugshot roundup: Twin billing