ArticlePloS one2020
Face pareidolia in the brain: Impact of gender and orientation.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 27 citations in OpenAlex.
- Face pareidolia is enhanced by 40 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) of the face perception network.Scientific reports · 2023Trial
- Dynamic brain communication underlying face pareidolia in male schizophrenia.Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Gender perception of pareidolia faces in emergency department patients: the influence of physician gender.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Perceptual constancy of pareidolias across paper and digital testing formats in neurodegenerative diseases.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Dynamic brain communication underwriting face pareidolia.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- I've just seen a face: further search for face pareidolia in chimpanzees (Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Face detection mechanisms: NatureFrontiers in neuroscience · 2024Review
- Preliminary evidence of an increased susceptibility to face pareidolia in postpartum women.Biology letters · 2023Article
- Do subtle cultural differences sculpt face pareidolia?Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2023Article
- Pareidolic faces receive prioritized attention in the dot-probe task.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2023Article
- Face pareidolia in male schizophrenia.Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2022Article
- Ties between reading faces, bodies, eyes, and autistic traits.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
- Gender differences in face pareidolia: The effect of cognitive style and judgment criteria.i-PerceptionArticle
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Research on face sensitivity is of particular relevance during the rapidly evolving Covid-19 pandemic leading to social isolation, but also calling for intact interaction and sharing. Humans possess high sensitivity even to a coarse face scheme, seeing faces in non-face images where real faces do not exist. The advantage of non-face images is that single components do not trigger face processing. Here by implementing a novel set of Face-n-Thing images, we examined (i) how face tuning alters with changing display orientation, and (ii) whether it is affected by observers' gender. Young females and males were presented with a set of Face-n-Thing images either with canonical upright orientation or inverted 180° in the image plane. Face impression was substantially impeded by display inversion. Furthermore, whereas with upright display orientation, no gender differences were found, with inversion, Face-n-Thing images elicited face impression in females significantly more often. The outcome sheds light on the origins of the face inversion effect in general. Moreover, the findings open a way for examination of face sensitivity and underwriting brain networks in neuropsychiatric conditions related to the current pandemic (such as depression and anxiety), most of which are gender/sex-specific.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.