Summary: <p>Face it – humans are pattern-seeking animals. We identify eyes, nose and mouth where there are none. Martian rock takes on a visage and the silhouette of Elvis appears in our burrito. Discover the roots of our face-tracking tendency – pareidolia – and why it sometimes leads us astray.</p> <p>Plus, why some brains can’t recognize faces at all … how computer programs exhibit their own pareidolia … and why it’s so difficult to replicate human vision in a machine</p> <h2>Guests:</h2> <ul> <li> <strong><a href="http://www.slate.com/authors.phil_plait.html">Phil Plait</a></strong> – Astronomer, Skeptic, and author of Slate Magazine’s blog <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html">Bad Astronomy</a> </li> <li> <strong><a href="http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/Josef_Parvizi/">Josef Parvizi</a></strong> – Associate professor, Stanford University, and clinical neurologist and epilepsy specialist at Stanford Medical Center</li> <li> <strong><a href="http://mcgovern.mit.edu/principal-investigators/nancy-kanwisher">Nancy Kanwisher</a></strong> – Cognitive neuroscientist, at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at <span class="caps">MIT</span> </li> <li> <strong><a href="http://gregborenstein.com/">Greg Borenstein</a></strong> – Artist, creative technologist who teaches at New York University</li> <li> <strong><a href="http://www.vision.caltech.edu/Perona.html">Pietro Perona</a></strong> – Professor of electrical engineering, computation and neural systems, California Institute of Technology</li> </ul><p><strong><a href="http://www.seti.cl/podcast-del-instituto-seti-acerca-del-rostro/">Descripción en español</a></strong></p>
