CPES

Have you ever had someone show you a photo and say, “Do you see that face in the window?”

The brain is the most complex part of the human body. The Fusiform Gyri is the section of the brain in charge of face and image perception. In general terms, the Fusiform Gyrus is known to be responsible for high-level visual processing tasks. These include, but are not limited to, facial recognition, reading, and even attributing emotions or understanding social cues from visual information. This brings us to what is known as pareidolia.

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon that perceives sensory stimulus, object or structure as a familiar recognizable pattern, such as a face or figure.  is very common and phenomenological. A newborn baby can recognize faces and human expressions, which means that the human brain may be sensitive enough to detect face-like patterns at birth.

Some well-known examples of pareidolia include seeing the face of Jesus Christ on a potato chip, a cinnamon bun with the face of Mother Teresa, the surface of a grilled sandwich showing the face of the Virgin Mary, Satan appearing in the smoke of 9/11, and a devil seen in the Queen’s hair of a 1954 Canadian banknote

In studying neuropathology, the existence of pareidolia is unintentional, and it is a random phenomenon. Normally the pareidolian images received by the human brain are incomplete, but then the brain automatically uses built-in knowledge and the data gathered from previous experiences to fill in the missing parts, generating a complete interpretation that produces a coherent picture.

In 1976 NASA’s Viking 1 mission photographed what many claimed to be a face on Mars that could have been the remains of an ancient civilization. However, as you can see from the 2001 high-resolution close-up, there is no face! Just another case of pareidolia effect.

This doesn’t mean that every questionable image seen or photographed is merely our mind playing tricks on us.

It is however, a plausible explanation backed by science and should be considered. It is only when you rule out the logical, can the unexplainable be considered paranormal.