Stanford Study on Facial Recognition and the Brain
I suspect that every law professor has had the experience of running into an individual — perhaps in an airport — who enthusiastically exclaims, “Professor So and So, do you remember me!?” Near the end of my class of 1L Contract students, I now even suggest to students that when this happens, they could help me out, by saying “Professor Pearson, I was in your 2012 class of Contracts — Remember me!?” Thus, allowing me to at least pretend….
However, the science of facial recognition — and perhaps memory as well — is gaining deeper understanding with the help of a Stanford University study. A recent Stanford Report article explains the work of Stanford neuroscientists studying prosopagnosia, or facial blindness. Here is an excerpt:
Recognizing the faces of family and friends seems vital to social interaction. However, some individuals lack this essential skill. Those with a condition called face blindness, or prosopagnosia, can see eyes, lips and other facial features, yet they cannot remember the whole picture, a face. The condition touches one in 50 people, including actor Brad Pitt, neurologist Oliver Sacks, and primatologist Jane Goodall….
The brain’s regions for face recognition and place recognition are located near to each other, under and behind the ears. For people with normal face and place recognition, the brain’s wiring for each region is correlated with how good they are at face or place recognition, respectively. But in adults with face blindness, only the wiring of the face-recognition region is different from typical adults, and is coupled with their recognition deficit….
The brain’s face- and place-recognition regions comprise grey-colored nerve cells. Extensions of those cells, or axons, range like wiring to other cells and regions of the brain to enable communication. Though face recognition is centered in particular regions of the brain, their complex function integrates perceptions such as depth, movement, shape and color, which take place in several parts of the brain. Those parts communicate with one another through axons. Thicker axons and more axons speed communication.
Each axon is sheathed with an outer layer of a white substance called myelin, similar in appearance to the way an electrical wire may be coated with an outer layer of insulation. Myelin gives the axons a white appearance, and so the axons with their sheaths are called white matter. The more myelin there is, the faster the communication. Myelin abnormalities distort or interrupt nerve impulses, as is seen in multiple sclerosis, a condition characterized by scarring of the myelin sheath. And myelin health might play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.”
Hat tip to Stanford “mom” Laurel Terry for sharing this item.