'Hair blindness' likely to exist in humans

[n2doc]

11:23 09 March 2009 by Ewen Callaway

Men have another excuse for failing to notice their wife or girlfriend's new haircut.

New research hints that human brains process hairstyles distinctly from other facial features. And just as a small proportion of people have trouble recognising faces yet otherwise see normally, others probably experience hair blindness.

I'd love to find them, but we haven't heard from anybody yet," says Brad Duchaine, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, who presented his preliminary findings at a recent talk at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Duchaine, who works extensively with people with face blindness or prosopagnosia, noticed that his subjects find clever ways to spot their friends and family.

"My prosopagnosics tell me that they use hair to recognise people all the time," he says. "I know I rely on hair a lot."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16720-hair-blindness-likely-to-exist-in-humans.html


Hair blindness? Beer Goggles? When will the madness all end?

[qb]

1. My hair blindness used to get me in trouble.

:scared:

[tritsofme]

2. Sent this one to the Mrs.

Thanks!

[formercia]

3. Spotting GOP assholes in Congress

Their hair gives them away.