Brain Uses Eyes First 2 Identify A Face

You'd better take off your sunglasses if you like to be recognised! According to researchers from the University of Barcelona in Spain, the brain looks at eyes first to identify a face, then the shape of the mouth and then the nose!

The new study found the brain adapts in order to obtain the maximum amount of information possible from each face. Matthias S. Keil ascertained which specific features the brain focuses on to identify a face. It has been known for years that the brain primarily uses low spatial frequencies to recognize faces. "Spatial frequencies" are, in a manner of speaking, the elements that make up any given image. Keil said. "Low frequencies pertain to low resolution, that is, small changes of intensity in an image," Keil said in a statement.

"In contrast, high frequencies represent the details in an image. If we move away from an image, we perceive increasingly less details, that is, the high spatial frequency components, while low frequencies remain visible and are the last to disappear."

Keil analyzed a large number of faces; 868 women and 868 men. "The idea was to find common statistical regularities in the images," Keil said. "The brain has adapted optimally to draw the most useful information from faces in order to identify them."