Pareidolia: The human brain’s tendency to find faces everywhere

Have you ever looked up at the clouds and seen faces? Perhaps, the side profile of a girl or someone holding a sword? Or maybe, even the shape of your late poodle. There's actually a name for this phenomenon: pareidolia. Our brains tend to see familiar shapes in random patterns.

We've all experienced pareidolia at some point, even if we didn't know what it is called

A decade ago, a woman noticed the image of Christ after accidentally burning a piece of roti. So, she took it to the local priest who called it a "miracle."

The woman was named Sheela Antony, a devout Catholic in India, and this incident occurred in 2002 in Bangalore, India. Word spread around and she found 20,000 Christians flocking to her house to see Christ's face.

This is not an isolated incident. Some 15,000 km away, in 2004, a Florida woman claimed to see the face of the Virgin Mary on her grilled cheese sandwich. She sold it on eBay for $28,000.

Many people have claimed to see demonic or angelic faces in the smoke during major fires or explosions. No wonder Harry Potter could talk to his godfather in the Gryffindor common room fireplace when Sirius was actually in hiding!

A muggle might claim that Harry had gone "mental" or it was just another example of pareidolia.

Some experts say pareidolia is a consequence of the brain's information processing systems. The brain is constantly sifting through random lines, shapes, surfaces and colours and trying to make sense of it.

The fusiform gyrus in the temporal lobe of the cortex activates to process facial recognition. The tendency for this recognition is an evolutionary byproduct as people are better off knowing if the face they're seeing is a friend or a foe.

Recently, NASA’s orbiters have captured multiple heart-shaped geological formations on the surface of Mars over the years. Some are impact craters, others eroded rock patterns, but some of them look close to perfect even though they formed by chance.

The formations were spotted in different regions of the planet by missions. Most of them are the result of volcanic activity, asymmetric impacts, wind erosion, or dry ice sublimation.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a famous heart-shaped crater in this region. Scientists believe it formed from an oblique impact, with additional shaping by erosion and perhaps seasonal frost.

So, the heart-shape is a more a matter of coincidence than an extraterrestrial being's calling to fellow humans!

We even tend to see faces in the front of cars, thanks to the placement of headlights (eyes), grilles (mouths), and bumpers (expressions). No wonder, we resonate so well to Pixar movies like Cars. Pixar relied on our subconscious tendency when designing the characters in Cars to make them emotionally relatable.

There's a wide variety of applications for this phenomenon. So the next time you spot a face in a tree, a cloud shaped like a dog or even Jesus on your toast, you’ll know exactly what to call it.

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