Brain scans reveal how monkeys recognize a familiar face

Researchers have struggled to explain how we can identify familiar faces - or how that process is different from the way we perceive unfamiliar ones. Another question relates to different types of familiarity - for example, if you're looking at the face of a real-life acquaintance, or a celebrity's face that you've seen many times before. But researchers have started unraveling this mystery by working with rhesus monkeys - primates whose face-processing systems are similar to our own -discovering two previously unknown areas of the brain involved in face recognition. Researchers measured the brain activity of rhesus macaques as they responded to pictures of monkeys' faces. Because these areas are located in regions of the brain associated with memory, studying these areas could provide new insights into cognitive processes that go well beyond vision.