You Look Familiar. Now Scientists Know Why.

Just 200 face cells are required to identify a face, the biologists say. After discovering how its features are encoded, the biologists were able to reconstruct the faces a monkey was looking at just by monitoring the pattern in which its face cells were firing. The finding needs to be confirmed in other laboratories. But, if correct, it could help understand how the brain encodes all seen objects, as well as suggesting new approaches to artificial vision. "Cracking the code for faces would definitely be a big deal," said Brad Duchaine, an expert on face recognition at Dartmouth.