Two authors from Cajal Institute, Miriam Caro and Dr. Emilio Tejera, have written an article about pareidolia in CSIC blog in Spanish (included in 20minutes newspaper website), <<Science to take away>>. The article is titled: ‘Pareidolia: I sometimes see faces’.

In this article, our collegues discuss about pareidolia (that means our capacity to perceive faces and other familiar figures in landscapes and non-animated objects) phenomenon, its causes, which factors induce it, and which relation this fact has with the way our brain processes information. So, we will realize that, as a disguised perspective, pareidolia says much about us (and our diseases) and hides relevant evolutive advantages .

Miriam Caro belongs to Molecular Biology Unit in Cajal Institute Cajal (CSIC), and this is her first collaboration with this blog. Dr. Emilio Tejera is in head of this unit, and he is a member of Scientific Culture Unit in the same centre. He has alredy written other articles for the same column: ‘Darling, where have I put Einstein’s brain?’, ‘Has artifitial intelligence solved the problem of protein structure?’ and “Brain Runner: how cinema has treated brain and mental diseases’. About the last article, Emilio Tejera was interviewed in the radio program ‘From zero to infinite’, from Onda Cero broadcast channel (you can listen dialog in Spanish from 1:03:00 in the episode).

Coming back to the article about pareidolia, you have additional information in the interview to Dr. Tejera in the program ‘From zero to infinite’, from 5:25 minute in the podcast.