A little Paredolia for ya?

Question

Does anyone have any first had experience with Paredolia? Paredolia is where the brain sees faces or images in patterns.

(faces in clouds, trees, wood grain, seeing jesus on a piece of toast)

I am not talking about casual paredolia.. I am talking about extreme paredolia.

For a while I had it really strongly. It was to the point where all I would see would be faces in patterns.. sometimes photo-realistic. The strange thing is that over time I even gained the ability to change the image. www.youtube.com/gooboberti

The quesiton I have is:

Has anyone ever had a case of paredolia? If you have not experienced it but know what is it.. can you provide a good explanation for it?

Answer 1

The explaination is the human learns (partially innately) to look for human faces, and recognises the pattern/prototype (it's one of our most important and strongest prototypes). The pattern, really is just two dark dots, a dot in the middle, and a line (eyes, nose, mouth). Extreme cases could be caused by over-sensitive neurons (low threshold) in the fusiform face area. That's what causes the sensation of recognising a face.

Answer 2

I Always have that, but didn't know there was a name for it...