14 DAY TRIAL // Too often, people who see Jesus or some other public figure either in toast or other mundane objects such as a piece of cloth or an odd-looking bruise are mocked by folks who are incapable of seeing these faces themselves.
The good news for these so-called Jesus-in-toast seers is that, according to scientists with the University of Toronto in Canada and fellow researchers, there is absolutely nothing wrong with seeing faces where and when there aren't any to see.
What's more, those who perceive such images don't even have their imagination to thank for it, seeing how their normal and fully functional brain is the only culprit behind such sightings.
In a paper in the scientific journal Cortex, the specialists detail that this phenomenon is known to the scientific community as face pareidolia, and that it has been around for centuries.
Although some might label those who see faces in objects as quirky, to put it mildly, it would appear that the behavior of those who report seeing images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or Elvis in odd places is very much normal.
Thus, this behavior is not due to one mental abnormality or another. On the contrary, the brains of the people who display it are working properly and are as mainstream as it comes, Science News explains.
“Most people think you have to be mentally abnormal to see these types of images, so individuals reporting this phenomenon are often ridiculed,” study leader Prof. Kang Lee of the University of Toronto says in a statement.
“But our findings suggest that it's common for people to see non-existent features because human brains are uniquely wired to recognize faces, so that even when there's only a slight suggestion of facial features the brain automatically interprets it as a face,” he adds.
Experiments have shown that, whenever instances of face pareidolia occur, the frontal cortex and the posterior visual cortex are the ones to be held responsible. The first of these two regions of the brain generates expectations, and the latter forces the interpretation of stimuli to meet these expectations.
This means that, depending on what an individual expects to see, stimuli originating from the outside world are processed in such ways by specific regions of the brain that they end up forming images that meet these expectations.
The University of Toronto researchers and their colleagues in China explain that this is the reason why, despite having fully functional brains, people can sometimes be tricked into seeing images that are not really there.