Image Processing Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1.9. Distribution of correct answers. Example reading: 11% of females and 5% of males
had 7 correct answers out of 8 they provided
in babies even younger than 10 minutes [66]. For example, human infants a few
minutes of age show a preference to track a human face farther than other moving
nonface objects [130]. While there is a reasonable rotation-invariance to recognize
objects though it takes longer times, turning a face upside down results usually in a
dramatic reduction of face identification [40]. These and other findings indicate that
face recognition develops earlier than other object recognition skills, and that it is
much more direction sensitive than recognition of other objects.
Perhaps recognition of face identities is so complex that encoding the diversity of
faces demands much more from our general-purpose, local direction, and frequency-
based feature extraction system. If so, that would explain our extreme directional
sensitivity in face recognition. One could even speculate further that the problem is
not even possible to solve in real time with our general object recognition system,
that it has an additional area that is either specialized on faces or helps to speed-up
and/or to robustify face recognition performance. This is more than an experiment
of thought because there is mounting evidence that faces [13, 99, 181, 232], just like
color (Chap. 2), disposes its own “brain center”.
Face sensitive cells
have been found
in several parts of the visual cortex of monkeys, although they are found in most
significant numbers in a subdivision of
inferotemporal cortex
in the vicinity of the
superior temporal sulcus. Whether these cells are actually necessary and sufficient to
establish the identity of a face, or if they are only needed for gaze-invariant general
