Identify faces from eyes

Our brain selects important information to recognize the first face from the eyes, then to the mouth and nose, according to a study by the University of Barcelona. This result is obtained by analyzing hundreds of facial images in a way similar to that of the brain.

Imagine a photo of a friend's face. Although you think any detail is important to identify that friend, many experiments show that the brain chooses a simpler solution, regardless of the distance to the observed face. So far, the reason for this phenomenon is still unknown. Through analyzing facial images of 868 men and 868 women, this new study may explain why.

Our brain selects important information to recognize faces from the eyes. (Photo: iStockphoto / Cristian Ardelean)

The results show that if the image size is 30 x 30 pixels, the information obtained is most useful. In addition, the eyes image has the best results (ie the eyes convey the most reliable information to the brain, compared to the image of the mouth and nose).This shows the mechanism of recognizing the face of the brain focusing on the eyes.

This study complements a previous study published in PLoS One, which shows that the artificial face recognition system works best when recognizing small face images - meaning machines There is also a similar mechanism for humans.

Refer:
1. Keil et al."I Look in Your Eyes, Honey": Internal Face Features Induce Spatial Frequency Preference for Human Face Processing.PLoS Computational Biology, 2009;5 (3): e1000329 DOI: 10.1371 / journal.pcbi.1000329