Pareidolia . It is derived etymologically from the Greek eidolon (εἴδωλον): ‘figure’ or ‘image’ and the prefix for (παρά): ‘next to’ or ‘attached’) is a psychological phenomenon where a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) is mistakenly perceived as a recognizable shape. An explanation of this phenomenon, according to the functioning of the brain, is described by Jeff Hawkins in his memory-prediction theory.
Summary
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- 1 Description
- 2 Known cases
- 3 Pareidolia as a way of finding meanings
- 4 Spindle twist: our face radar
- 5 Greatnesses of the brain
- 6 Sources
Description
The sacred character given to certain archaeological sites could be explained with the psychological phenomenon of hierophany , generally associated with religious experiences or with the phenomenon of pareidolia , which is perceptual and not necessarily pathological. This phenomenon is used in psychological evaluations, as in the Rorschach test .
Known Cases
Common examples of pareidolia are:
- Vision of animals or faces in the shape of clouds .
- Vision of faces on the tops of some stony hills
- Vision of faces in the front or back of a vehicle (the headlights would represent the eyes, the grill the mouth or teeth and the windshield the forehead or head)
- Images of faces on appliances or buildings.
- Vision of people or silhouettes on the pavement.
- Hearing recognizable messages in recordings in unknown languages or played backwards.
- Sightings of UFOs , cryptids , ghosts or other paranormal phenomena .
- Numerous religious or simply humanoid figures on astronomical objects such as the Moon , the Eagle Nebula , etc.
- Religious images on everyday objects (trees, rocks, plants).
- Constellations .
- It helps to visualize similarities between people.
- The so-called Face on Mars is a famous case of pareidolia.
At some time we have all entertained ourselves by scrutinizing the clouds, or looking at the paving of the streets, or simply when we look at a toast or some gadget of the many that we have at home, surely once we have seemed to see a face or even the figure of an animal. This is a phenomenon that happens to all of us and although scientists do not fully agree, it seems that they are due to the existence of connections between our brain and our vision that makes the first one not work well. The phenomenon of relating faces in clouds or walls has been called pareidolia.
Pareidolia is a phenomenon that experts define or associate with an indication that the brain works in the wrong way and is pairing some stimuli described as ambiguous with the representation of a face. But the concept of pareidolia has led to the hypothesis that there must be a specific area in the brain that is responsible for processing faces. Scientists have located this area in the right hemisphere of the brain. This location is very interesting because what is well known is that the right hemisphere controls feelings and creativity, and deep down pareidolia is basically a creative process.
But the unreal visions that the brain makes us think that we are observing and perceiving even in an unreal way, do not end with pareidolia. There is another concept that defines an unreality that the brain makes us perceive, this other concept is called apophenia . Apophenia is seeing nonsensical data patterns or events. An example of apophenia is, for example, thinking that getting out of bed with your right foot always brings luck or that the phone is going to ring and it goes and rings. We could say then that in some cases apophenia is close to what we can understand as superstition or sometimes even a possible predictive capacity.. Pareidolia is also considered a type of apophenia. Apophenia appears to be caused by a very high activity of the dopaminergic system .
Another unreality that we can have is the mirage . The mirage is an optical illusion . The optical illusion is produced by a refraction of light. If you try a pen and put it in a glass of water, it will give you the optical sensation that the pen is angled. When the air layers acquire different temperatures, as occurs between the desert and the air, the density varies between them and as sunlight passes through them, the light is superficially refracted and reflected as if it were a true mirror, giving the sensation of the presence of water. It is the mirage.
Both apophenia and pareidolia or mirages are not pathologies and practically everyone has believed to see some of the phenomena associated with them.
The story says that Plato narrated the allegory of the cave in which a series of chained men had as their only horizon the bottom of the cave where they were projected due to the light of a bonfire, the shadows of animals and other people. The prisoners of Plato and did not look back not realize that the shadows were just simple reflections of things that were behind them. Said Graham Greene “You will never convince a mouse that a black cat brings luck”. The mouse is probably not aware of apophenia.
Pareidolia as a way of finding meanings
Our brain is equipped with mechanisms to recognize patterns and continuities in the midst of all that sensory clutter. Neural networks are the perfect way to create systems that always activate the same when faced with apparently different stimuli. Hence, we can recognize the people close to us despite their physical and psychological changes. Hence also that we can apply similar strategies in different contexts, apply what we have learned to different situations and even recognize plagiarism in a piece of music. However, this ability also has a very striking side effect called pareidolia .
Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon consisting of the recognition of significant patterns (such as faces) in ambiguous and random stimuli. You may find that this piece of rock is shaped like a human face, it is amazing and at the same time fantastic. But not all pareidolias are as visible as this one. Evolutionarily we have developed neural networks in charge of processing relevant stimuli, so that some patterns become much more evident to us than others, while in other cases we have to observe well to be able to see what others have seen. At some point in our evolution, the visual system with which we are equipped became incredibly sensitive to stimuli that resemble human faces, a part of the body that is of great importance for non-verbal communication. Later, at one point in our history, we became capable of making countless objects following simple patterns, recognizable and regular. And at that moment the party began:
Spindle twist: our face radar
Our brain is equipped with specific circuits that are activated to process visual information related to faces differently from other data, and the part of the brain that contains these circuits is also responsible for the phenomenon of pareidolia. This structure is called the fusiform gyrus., and in a matter of hundredths of seconds, it makes us see faces where there are, but also where there are none. In addition, when this second possibility occurs, we cannot avoid having the strong sensation of looking at someone, even if that someone is actually a gryphon, a rock or a facade. That’s the subconscious power of the fusiform twist: like it or not, it will kick in whenever we see something vaguely reminiscent of a face. It is the counterpart for having designed a brain that is prepared to face a large number of changing and unpredictable stimuli.
So even though because of these pareidolias we sometimes feel watched, remember that it is only our brain making plays.
Greatness of the brain
These phenomena have their reason for being in the special treatment that our brain gives to patterns that can be read in the middle of the coming and going of confused images. Our brains make us wise, but nature makes our brains useful. Starting today, when your brain detects a face where there is only one object, you will also remember this article. This phenomenon has been widely studied and far from being a reflection of a mental problem, it is a good symptom. Professor Kang Lee , University of Toronto, explains that seeing faces in inanimate things is a symptom that our brain connections are working perfectly. “The human brain is uniquely wired to recognize faces, so even when there is only a slight suggestion of facial features, our brain automatically interprets them as a face.
