Let’s start with an old joke, the source and exact details of which I cannot remember.
The bells of a church were stuck. The bell ringer, who plied his trade rather anonymously in the dim light of the bell tower, was befuddled. The townspeople didn’t know when to attend Vespers. The village vicar was getting angry. Nothing the bell ringer tried seemed to work. He tried using WD-40; he yanked hard on the ropes; he even threw a hammer at the headstock to loosen the full-circle wheel. Finally, he got as far away from the carillon as he could in the narrow bell tower’s bell room and ran full force at the bell, jumping onto the bells. Unfortunately for him, he slipped just as he jumped, hitting his head on the bell. He fell to his death as the bell rang. Finding his body at the bottom of the tower, one of the parishioners asked another, “Who is that?” The other parishioner responded, “I don’t know his name, but his face sure rings a bell.”
I’m tempted to relate other recognition jokes, so easy to do in an age of AI, smartphones that recognize their users, and the ubiquitous CCTVs. Okay, I’ll cite one other: At a meeting of vegans, a woman approaches two men, engages in conversation with one of them, and then walks over to the buffet of vegetables. One of the men says, “Who was that woman who talked to you? She seemed to know you.” The other says, “I don’t know; I never met herbivore.”
Enough.
Some neuroscientists recently reported finding the part of the brain that recognizes familiar faces. * It’s a group of neurons in the Temporal Pole. They make up a collective “grandmother neuron,” a hypothetical, but never found, face-recognition neuron. If their finding is correct, they might have discovered a region of the brain responsible for prosopagnosia—face blindness.
Not many people suffer from the problem, but some do. According to the neuroscientists who did the study, the TP region is one that appears to link sensory and memory domains. Obviously, lacking the connection is something we associate with Alzheimer’s, and that condition is heartbreaking for family members who lose their long-term relationships with loved ones.
Being recognized by our faces isn’t restricted to our species, of course. The study conducted by Sofia Landi, Pooja Viswanathan, Stephen Serene, and Winrich A. Freiwald, involved macaques. We can reasonably assume that the human TP plays a similar role, possibly leading the way to studies that might effect a cure for prosopagnosia someday. But, of course, the brain is complex, so much is left unknown about perceiving and remembering.
You might consider that you have tied your memory to people you have never seen, and consider all those you recognize not by their faces, but rather by their accomplishments, the authors whose works you might have read, the composers whose music you have heard, and the philosophers whose thoughts you have adopted. Their works, and not their faces, are what you recognize. Our memories are filled with such “faceless” people whom we know because we recognize their contributions to the formation of our own identities. Next time you look in the mirror and recognize your own face, take a moment to see how those many others, those people you never saw but who indirectly and directly influenced who you are, have shaped what everyone you know now recognizes in you or as you. In “Ulysses” Tennyson writes, “I am a part of all that I have met.” It is equally true that “All that I have met are part of me,” and that “Many I have not met are also part of me.”
*Landi, Sofia M., et al. 1 Jul 2021. A fast link between face perception and memory in the temporal pole. Science. DOI:10.1126/science.abi6671. Reported online in MedicalXpress by Rockefeller University 1 Jul 2021 at search.anysearchmanager.com/?_pg=40AD8F32-8C74-50EB-B3F5-5719CEABBE8A&affid=A172R_set_bcr_H&type=h
The bells of a church were stuck. The bell ringer, who plied his trade rather anonymously in the dim light of the bell tower, was befuddled. The townspeople didn’t know when to attend Vespers. The village vicar was getting angry. Nothing the bell ringer tried seemed to work. He tried using WD-40; he yanked hard on the ropes; he even threw a hammer at the headstock to loosen the full-circle wheel. Finally, he got as far away from the carillon as he could in the narrow bell tower’s bell room and ran full force at the bell, jumping onto the bells. Unfortunately for him, he slipped just as he jumped, hitting his head on the bell. He fell to his death as the bell rang. Finding his body at the bottom of the tower, one of the parishioners asked another, “Who is that?” The other parishioner responded, “I don’t know his name, but his face sure rings a bell.”
I’m tempted to relate other recognition jokes, so easy to do in an age of AI, smartphones that recognize their users, and the ubiquitous CCTVs. Okay, I’ll cite one other: At a meeting of vegans, a woman approaches two men, engages in conversation with one of them, and then walks over to the buffet of vegetables. One of the men says, “Who was that woman who talked to you? She seemed to know you.” The other says, “I don’t know; I never met herbivore.”
Enough.
Some neuroscientists recently reported finding the part of the brain that recognizes familiar faces. * It’s a group of neurons in the Temporal Pole. They make up a collective “grandmother neuron,” a hypothetical, but never found, face-recognition neuron. If their finding is correct, they might have discovered a region of the brain responsible for prosopagnosia—face blindness.
Not many people suffer from the problem, but some do. According to the neuroscientists who did the study, the TP region is one that appears to link sensory and memory domains. Obviously, lacking the connection is something we associate with Alzheimer’s, and that condition is heartbreaking for family members who lose their long-term relationships with loved ones.
Being recognized by our faces isn’t restricted to our species, of course. The study conducted by Sofia Landi, Pooja Viswanathan, Stephen Serene, and Winrich A. Freiwald, involved macaques. We can reasonably assume that the human TP plays a similar role, possibly leading the way to studies that might effect a cure for prosopagnosia someday. But, of course, the brain is complex, so much is left unknown about perceiving and remembering.
You might consider that you have tied your memory to people you have never seen, and consider all those you recognize not by their faces, but rather by their accomplishments, the authors whose works you might have read, the composers whose music you have heard, and the philosophers whose thoughts you have adopted. Their works, and not their faces, are what you recognize. Our memories are filled with such “faceless” people whom we know because we recognize their contributions to the formation of our own identities. Next time you look in the mirror and recognize your own face, take a moment to see how those many others, those people you never saw but who indirectly and directly influenced who you are, have shaped what everyone you know now recognizes in you or as you. In “Ulysses” Tennyson writes, “I am a part of all that I have met.” It is equally true that “All that I have met are part of me,” and that “Many I have not met are also part of me.”
*Landi, Sofia M., et al. 1 Jul 2021. A fast link between face perception and memory in the temporal pole. Science. DOI:10.1126/science.abi6671. Reported online in MedicalXpress by Rockefeller University 1 Jul 2021 at search.anysearchmanager.com/?_pg=40AD8F32-8C74-50EB-B3F5-5719CEABBE8A&affid=A172R_set_bcr_H&type=h
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