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Brain Region That Recognizes Faces Keeps Growing in Adulthood (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Engadget report: Neurologists thought that your brain was basically set once you hit early childhood, but researchers from Stanford have discovered one part that keeps growing. Using new MRI imaging techniques, they found that the "fusiform gyrus," which is mostly responsible for recognizing human faces, keeps expanding well after other regions have stopped. The research could lead to more sophisticated cellular analysis of the brain and help patients with a disorder called "facial blindness." Normally, our brain actually loses neurons between early childhood and puberty in a process called "pruning." That applies to visual parts of the brain that identify things like cityscape or hallways, but not faces. The researchers used two different MRI machines to scan both brain activity and density in two different parts of the brain: the region responsible for identifying faces, and an area used for other types of visual recognition. They then compared those structures in the brains of children (aged five to 12) to adults between 22 to 28. It turned out that adults had thicker fusiform gyrus regions than kids, different levels of proteins and cells and more activity. By contrast, the other visual regions showed lower levels of development.
"Fusiform Gyrus" is my porn name.
... a lot of faces keep growing in adulthood, too.
Do more extroverted individuals notice an even greater increase in density... or was this increase noticed in members of the study despite sociability.
In other words... it might be easy to think "well, we keep meeting new people through out our lives, and considering how important social ties are to humans, it only makes sense that one part of the brain would keep growing". But that naturally leads me to wonder "do loners notice the same brain growth?"
Neurologists thought that your brain was basically set once you hit early childhood
Around here the big excuse for making marijuana legal at 21 but not 18 was "your brain is still growing well into your 20s, if you start smoking weed at 18 your brain will never finish growing properly." Did they forget to consult a neurologist?
With me, it was the region that recognized tits and asses.
I can't remember faces to save my life. It's great, you get to meet a lot of new people every day...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A few years back where Google Glasses were gaining in popularity (and controversy), I was looking forward to them. I wanted them to come with a facial recognition application that would put little floating name tags over people's heads along with some pertinent information.
"Name: Murray Douglas. Known Via: Work. Association: Developed department X website for him in June 2007. Last sighting: Two years ago in the mall while clothes shopping."
I'd completely buy a pair of computerized glasses if I never had to worry about not recognizing people's faces or forgetting people's names (or even worse, misremembering and calling someone I've known for years by the wrong name) ever again.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Without even having read the article yet (looking forward to it though), it makes complete sense for this to be the case. If the brain didn't continue to grow and adapt this way, you'd have a tough time recognizing someone's face after a few years. Who hasn't gone to a reunion or some other social event and recognized someone that you hadn't seen in years, even decades?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
What out, here comes his head!! (because he meets a lot of new people)
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
I wonder if this is related to poorer eyesight as we age. If we assume recognizing a face from a modest distance and distinguishing one person form another is more important than some other recognition tasks (recognition tasks?). It would certainly seem harder. So maybe your body just assumes it better up it's game as your eyes degenerate or a Cave Lion eats one of them. It would also be interesting to see if there's a correlation between poorer eyesight (not necessarily due to age) and this. Although I assume that most of the subjects either had pretty decent vision or generally corrected their vision with glasses.
"Normally, our brain actually loses neurons between early childhood and puberty in a process called "pruning." "
Our priest said, that puberty process killing neurons was called 'jerking off'.
I really think might be missing that region. recently ran into a guy whom i've seemingly never seen before. turned out to be my brother-in-law's brother, whom i've met several times.
... meet more people.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I'm brilliant at remembering names and faces.
I do, however, have trouble linking the two together.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because I'll be damned if I can recognize people by their faces most of the time.
Yes, with long-time exposure, I can kinda get it. But for most people, I struggle over even tiny information.
Probably comes from being dropped on my head so much as a kid.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Surely this will change now that everyone has a book of faces that recognises them for you.
I left my office one day and a guy walks up to me and says, "Hey, want a ride to your car?" and I stare blankly at this weirdo with a beard for what felt like minutes (probably around 10 seconds) filling in the time with my excellent improv skills, "Um, uhhh", scrunching my face up, he seemed excited or amused, "I'm parked across the street," he says, finally I realize it's my boss that I've worked with on a daily basis the past 2 or 3 years, and all day that very same day. That was before I realized "facial blindness" was a thing, and I think being aware of it has helped me improve quite a bit. Usually if I go with my instincts I'm right about 70% of the time, but the other 30% is not fun. In my defense it would really help if everyone stopped looking a lot like everyone else.
When I was considerably younger, I had great difficulty remembering names, could never correctly identify actors in new films (even tho' I'd seen them inseveral previous ones), and so on.
I can't say for sure whether it's aging -- of which I seem to have done quite a lot -- or careful self-trainng that has changed my ability a bit. First thing I learned about the movie-actor thing was to listen to the voice rather than study the face. That worked.
But even now, I'm much better at remembering people's dogs' names than the folks themselves :-), and I often have a problem remembering a person's name if I happen to meet them in an unexpected environment, say a co-worker who pops up when i'm on vaca in a different city. I recognize the face pretty well, but not the name.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw