If you’ve ever indulged in cloud-gazing to find shapes, noticed that unused electrical outlets appear to be permanently surprised, or spotted a “drunk octopus” hook on the back of a bathroom stall, then you’ve experienced the neurological wonder that is pareidolia.
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Defined as the tendency to perceive meaningful patterns in a random or ambiguous images, pareidolia was once thought to be a sign of psychosis.
It’s now widely recognized that pareidolia serves a practical purpose—or at least, it once did—and it’s entirely normal to experience it, even frequently. Let’s take a closer look: Why do we see faces in things that clearly aren’t faces?
If you often discover humanoid faces on inanimate objects, your fusiform gyrus, a section of the brain that recognizes faces, is in fine form. According to Pawan Sinha, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, the fusiform gyrus is the part of the brain responsible for making it appear as if your fried eggs are muttering at you.
Sinha says the fusiform gyrus serves two purposes. When looking at an object or pattern, the left half of the fusiform gyrus activates first to determine if the pattern can be interpreted as facial features. Then it notifies the right half, which uses that information to quickly calculate if the pattern is a face or just resembles one.
But why do our brains place such importance on this innate ability? Many scientists, including Carl Sagan, have tied it back to our survival instincts. For example, identifying the face of an animal hiding in wait may well have saved many early humans from grisly deaths. Or it could have helped babies identify grown-up faces, which caused them to smile, which caused them to get taken care of, which helped them survive.