Brain's face recognition area grows much bigger as we get older

The fusiform gyrus is thought to play a role in recognising faces, something that adults are better at doing than children. Brain scans of 47 people of different ages found – after taking into account the differing overall sizes of their brains – that adults had 12.6 per cent more solid brain matter in this area than children did. The team compared the growth of the face recognition region with a different area, responsible for recognising places. Inadequate growth of the brain's face recognition areas might contribute to autism, Duchaine suggests, as well as conditions that make people unable to recognise faces.