Key points A human face configuration, even in infancy, captures our attention automatically. The ability to detect human faces is highly adaptive, given the importance of faces for social interaction ...

Ever spotted a face gazing back from a cloud or tree trunk? Most folks brush it off as a quirky brain trick called face pareidolia. New findings reveal that people with visual snow syndrome live with ...

If you have ever spotted faces or human-like expressions in everyday objects, you may have experienced the phenomenon of face pareidolia. Now, a new study by the University of Surrey has looked into ...

Two eyes and a mouth—it doesn’t take much for our brains to construct a face—or in this case, two faces looking back at us. Source: Paul Hanaoka/Unsplash Many people have described looking at their ...

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode. What happens when imagination meets perception, and ordinary objects come alive? We explore the science of pareidolia. Summary: Our minds are wired to ...

It seems the universe is constantly making fun at our expense.

What do you see here? A moss-covered tree trunk, yes, but take a closer look. Your brain's ability to find familiar objects, such as a face or body part, in random stimuli has a name: pareidolia. (For ...

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