In an earlier interview with Bored Panda, professor Kang Lee from the University of Toronto explained to us the science of seeing faces and familiar figures in things.
"Pareidolia illustrates the interaction between the visual cortex and the frontal cortex of the human brain. It suggests that our brain is highly sensitive and expecting to encounter and process some special classes of objects in our environment because they are biological and socially important to our adaptions to the environment," the professor detailed.
"For example, when you are walking in a dark street in the evening, your brain is on high alert to detect whether any threat will jump out at any moment. In this case, you are more likely to have face or human pareidolia because it is important for you to err on the side of caution if you mistake a tree as a human being."
He continued: "However, for some people, their frontal cortex’s expectation for certain objects (e.g., faces) become so high that they see faces in many situations where no faces exist."
According to Professor Lee, this is normal and there’s nothing wrong with people who see faces or figures where there aren’t any.
“Pareidolia is different from paranoia or delusion or abnormal vision of individuals with psychosis. In fact, a recent study shows that those people with pareidolia tend to be more creative. Also, people who are religious may be able to see religious icons in non-face objects as well."
He added that pareidolia shows how powerfully our imaginations (which comes from our frontal cortex) can affect our perception (which takes place first in the visual cortex which is located in the occipital lobe in the back of our head).
“What we see are not things over there in the world but actually the co-creation of what is out there physically and what is in our mind mentally through our expectations and imaginations,” he said.
However, pareidolia isn’t only a visual phenomenon. “Pareidolia is a broader phenomenon as it extends to touch and sound and other sensory channels. For example, you sometimes sense your phone vibrating when it is not, it is a tactile form of pareidolia. When you hear voices in a noisy environment, it is an auditory form of pareidolia." So technically you could feel a cat brushing up against you or hear a feline meowing, too!
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