Exploring connections between face memory, synaesthesia, law enforcement, the arts and the immune system. Is personification synaesthesia the key to understanding face recognition?
I’m not the only person to wonder if the older and younger actors in the latest Trivago ad might be the same actor altered with makeup etc. It appears that the actors are in fact Charlotte Weston and the Australian actor Gabrielle Miller. Was any kind of face-matching technology or expertise used by an actor’s agency to deliberately find an older actor who looks a lot like Ms Miller?
Wikipedia lists performance artist, tap dancer, mime and puppeteer as talents of Ms Miller, on top of her famous work in advertising. I think that is a remarkable committment to annoying the general public.
A man’s mouth decorated with black lippy, those sad-looking eyes that seem to be melting down the side of a long face with minimal cheekbones, on a man with a tall, powerful build and a deep voice that is simply stunning.
Why is this look so familiar?
Why?
Oh yes, that’s why!
Interesting that Fred Gwynne was also a great slab of a man with a deep voice that he shared with us in song, and had a great love of theatricality, a sense of humour, and a willingness to dress like a horrific freak for a job. Similar faces often go with similar lives and similar personalities. Are these similarities more than skin-deep?
Visual/musical effects in this video clip are a lot like synaesthesia evoked by music. This kind of effect is found quite often in music clips, especially for electronic music, and this type of synaesthesia seems to be one of the more common types, both in terms of how many people experience it and how often it is experienced by individuals. Contrary to what some researchers seem to believe, synaesthesia is not a constant experience. Specific cognitive or sensory stimuli, either from one’s own thoughts or from the world around evoke synaesthesia, and at least for me, not everything that I experience is a synaesthesia inducer, but nothing evokes synaesthesia like good music or interesting music.
This story about “information artist” Heather Dewey-Hagborg creating art (face) portraits made based on genetic information from strangers is not new, but it is new to me and I think interesting
The green thing is a mouse’s microglial cell. The movie is “courtesy Dorothy Schafer, Ph.D. and Beth Stevens, Ph.D. at Boston Children’s Hospital.” At this blog I have speculated that the kind of process shown in this brief video clip possibly happens less often in the brains of some people because they have lower levels of some of the complement chemicals that are a part of the immune system, with the result being the development of, or the retaining of, childhood or developmental synaesthesia. Some of the complement chemicals mark out synapses for destruction, I believe.
Oh, I get it! This cute tune by Calvin Harris is called “Bounce” because it goes up and down and up and down. Makes me want to move too. http://youtu.be/ooZwmeUfuXg
Am I a super-recognizer? 