ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2022
The cortical and subcortical correlates of face pareidolia in the macaque brain.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Face pareidolia is enhanced by 40 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) of the face perception network.Scientific reports · 2023Trial
- Parallel processing of distinct facial signals for the rapid evaluation of social agents.iScience · 2026Article
- Article
- Attentional capture by real and illusory faces: a failure to replicate.Psychological research · 2025Article
- Dynamic brain communication underlying face pareidolia in male schizophrenia.Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Face pareidolia minimally engages macaque face selective neurons.Progress in neurobiology · 2025Article
- Human-like face pareidolia emerges in deep neural networks optimized for face and object recognition.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Face cells encode object parts more than facial configuration of illusory faces.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Neuronal Mechanisms Underlying Face Recognition in Non-human Primates.The Japanese psychological research · 2024Article
- Beyond faces: the contribution of the amygdala to visual processing in the macaque brain.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- A behavioral advantage for the face pareidolia illusion in peripheral vision.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Dynamic brain communication underwriting face pareidolia.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Inactivation of face-selective neurons alters eye movements when free viewing faces.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
- Preliminary evidence of an increased susceptibility to face pareidolia in postpartum women.Biology letters · 2023Article
- Computational components of visual predictive coding circuitry.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2023Review
- Face pareidolia in male schizophrenia.Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2022Article
- A broadly tuned network for affective body language in the macaque brain.Science advances · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Face detection is a foundational social skill for primates. This vital function is thought to be supported by specialized neural mechanisms; however, although several face-selective regions have been identified in both humans and nonhuman primates, there is no consensus about which region(s) are involved in face detection. Here, we used naturally occurring errors of face detection (i.e. objects with illusory facial features referred to as examples of 'face pareidolia') to identify regions of the macaque brain implicated in face detection. Using whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging to test awake rhesus macaques, we discovered that a subset of face-selective patches in the inferior temporal cortex, on the lower lateral edge of the superior temporal sulcus, and the amygdala respond more to objects with illusory facial features than matched non-face objects. Multivariate analyses of the data revealed differences in the representation of illusory faces across the functionally defined regions of interest. These differences suggest that the cortical and subcortical face-selective regions contribute uniquely to the detection of facial features. We conclude that face detection is supported by a multiplexed system in the primate brain.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.