The Eyes (And Brain) Of The Beholder

By David Bjerklie

Scientists used to believe that the human brain recognized faces as a whole. But a new study published last week in the Journal of Vision reports that our visual system seems to parse faces as it does words: by their component parts--eyes, nose, lips. The beauty of the brain is that it can assemble those parts into a familiar face in the blink of an eye. --By David Bjerklie