In this episode we take a look at faces, the centre of our visual social world. From super-recognisers helping the police to track down criminals, to people with ‘face-blindness’ who are unable to recognise their own families, we explore the tricky landscape of face perception. We take a look at the evolutionary origins, critical developmental periods, and the specialised neural pathways that make us face experts. Along the way we find out how to “melt” or distort somebody’s face through brain stimulation, why the man mistook his wife for a hat, and why older people become less sensitive to negative emotions. We get into it over a bottle of Roku gin in episode 4 of Abstracts.

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FFA Stimulation Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7AQ8NjSnTo

Super-recogniser test: http://bit.ly/super-recognition

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'Coffee' by Cambo (Theme)

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Cambo/Chilled_Beats/Coffee

Oliver Sacks - Face Blindness (Oliver Sacks Foundation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5bvnXYIQG8

Sensation Without Perception: Visual Prosopagnosia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCrxomPbtY

BBC - Article on Super Recognisers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ-iQqsBHHk