Facial recognition is wholistic

This blog has been on hiatus as I've been dealing with a body-hostile healthcare system, insurance sociopaths and delusionally self-infatuated doctors, and I didn't want to take it out on the science.

This charming study turned up today and led me back here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111202155755.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Mind+%26+Brain+News%29

'ScienceDaily (2011-12-02) -- "Face recognition is an important social skill, but not all of us are equally good at it," says a cognitive psychologist. But what accounts for the difference? A new study provides the first experimental evidence that the inequality of abilities is rooted in the unique way in which the mind perceives faces.'

The brain uses a wholistic method for recognizing faces, whereas recognizing objects is more analytical -- meaning that the object is parsed out by the brain and assessed in chunks. Doesn't work well on faces, though.

One very pleasing, intelligent thing to note: these researchers concluded that the logical next step is to train people to use their brains more effectively -- not to look for yet another drug to fiddle with one part of a complex process and leave the patient more helpless than before.

My own facial recognition has plummeted with the evolution of CRPS, but it's a skill I acquired rather late in life. I'd always recognized people by the way they held themselves and moved -- a different region of the brain entirely. So I trained myself to recognize faces as such.

I'm not sure I could recapture that ability, but when a few other mental faculties are more predictable, I'm game to try.