ENCORE Face it – humans are pattern-seeking animals. We identify eyes, nose and mouth where there are none. Martian rock takes on a visage and the silhouette of Elvis appears in our burrito. Discover the roots of our face-tracking tendency – pareidolia – and why it sometimes leads us astray.
Plus, why some brains can’t recognize faces at all … how computer programs exhibit their own pareidolia … and why it’s so difficult to replicate human vision in a machine
Guests:

Phil Plait – Astronomer, Skeptic, and author of Slate Magazine’s blog Bad Astronomy
Josef Parvizi – Associate professor, Stanford University, and clinical neurologist and epilepsy specialist at Stanford Medical Center
Nancy Kanwisher – Cognitive neuroscientist, at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Greg Borenstein – Artist, creative technologist who teaches at New York University
Pietro Perona – Professor of electrical engineering, computation and neural systems, California Institute of Technology

Descripción en español
First released February 25, 2013.