Why Do We See Faces That Aren’t Real?

The human brain uses the same mechanisms to identify either real or fake faces. Once you’ve seen an imaginary mug, your mind won’t let go of the impression, storing the perception just like it would the image of a real person’s face. One <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945214000288" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">study</a> using brain scans suggested that believing is seeing: The mind interprets signals to represent what we expect (or hope) to see. “Our findings suggest that it’s common for people to see non-existent features because human brains are uniquely wired to recognize faces, so that even when there’s only a slight suggestion of facial features the brain automatically interprets it as a face,” explained Kang Lee, PhD, a professor of applied psychology at the University of Toronto. <a href="https://medium.com/aha-science/why-do-we-see-faces-that-arent-real-fe1c943b0a6d">Read More</a>