4. There's A Special Part Of The Brain Just For Recognizing Faces

Question	Answer
Nancy Kanwisher (1997)	Identified the FFA (Fusiform Face Area).
FFA (Fusiform Face Area)	Area outside of the visual cortex that lets us recognize faces. Bypasses the usual interpretation channels to identify faces more quickly than objects.
Amygdala	The brain's emotional center. Located near the FFA.
Karen Pierce (2001)	Was able to show autistic people identify faces the same way as objects, with regular pathways, instead of the FFA.
Emotional Connection Image: Point4 Emotional Connection (binary/octet-stream)	A face is looking right at the user (on a webpage). It has more of an emotional impact on the viewer.
Direct Attention Image: Point4 Direct Attention (binary/octet-stream)	A face is looking directly at a product, which makes us look at it. Though we may not pay attention to it, we see it.
Catherine Mondloch (with others) (1999)	Used research to show newborns that are less than an hour old have a preference of looking at something with facial features.
Christine Looser and T. Wheatley (2010) Image: Point4 Face Morph (binary/octet-stream)	Created a study with morphing images of a face into a mannequin face. Most people thought the face didn't look real around the 75% mark by looking at the eyes.

Resource summary

	Created by Tasha Frisbee about 4 years ago