It only takes two dots and a curve for our brains to shout “face!” From startled-looking houses to smiling appliances, we’re wired to spot familiar patterns everywhere. The Things With Faces community ...

A mountain rock in the shape of a human face. Atlas Mountains, Morocco. Similar to Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Great Stone Face." Source: Gusman/Bridgeman Images, used with permission "One ...

Seeing faces in everyday objects is a common experience, but research from The University of Queensland has found people are more likely to see male faces when they see an image on the trunk of a tree ...

This rocky hill in Ebihens, France, is, well, just that -- a rocky hill in Ebihens, France. But to pretty much any human observer, the assemblage of meaningless angles takes on a familiar appearance, ...

Three thousand years ago, in ancient China, sages stuck red hot pokers into empty turtle shells to study the way cracks developed on the flat side of the shell. Depending on the pattern made by the ...

Consuming volumes of horror movies and candy corn may cause the mind to go wild, but stop yourself from spiraling when you see — oh, I don’t know — Albert Einstein’s face in your office’s ceiling tile ...

A 20-year-old woman presented to our emergency department after a cliff-jumping adventure went awry. The ultrasound of the aorta was benign, but a “Darth Vader” sign found off the reflection of the ...

Whether it is a cloud formation, a piece of tree bark or even a slice of toast, we all think we have seen familiar-looking faces in the most unlikely places. The phenomenon, called face pareidolia, is ...

, that appeared. Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of ...

Positron emission tomography (PET) scans in this patient population also found that the number of pareidolic illusions correlated with hypometabolism in the bilateral temporal, parietal, and occipital ...