Skeptic Check: About Face

Face it – humans are pattern-seeking animals. We identify eyes, nose and mouth where there are none. Martian rock takes on a visage and the silhouette of Elvis appears in our burrito. Discover the roots of our face-tracking tendency – pareidolia – and why it sometimes leads us astray.

Plus, why some brains can’t recognize faces at all … how computer programs exhibit their own pareidolia … and why it’s so difficult to replicate human vision in a machine

Guests:

• Phil Plait – Astronomer, Skeptic, and author of Slate Magazine’s blog Bad Astronomy
• Josef Parvizi – Associate professor, Stanford University, and clinical neurologist and epilepsy specialist at Stanford Medical Center
• Nancy Kanwisher – Cognitive neuroscientist, at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
• Greg Borenstein – Artist, creative technologist who teaches at New York University
• Pietro Perona – Professor of electrical engineering, computation and neural systems, California Institute of Technology

Descripción en español

First released February 25, 2013.

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