This article about biology may be excessively human-centric.(March 2024) |
Face | |
---|---|
Details | |
Identifiers | |
Latin | facies, facia or fave |
MeSH | D005145 |
TA98 | A01.1.00.006 |
TA2 | 112 |
FMA | 24728 |
Anatomical terminology |
The face is the front of an animal's head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. [1] [2] The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may affect the psyche adversely. [1]
The front of the human head is called the face. It includes several distinct areas, [3] of which the main features are:
Facial appearance is vital for human recognition and communication. Facial muscles in humans allow expression of emotions.[ citation needed ]
The face is itself a highly sensitive region of the human body and its expression may change when the brain is stimulated by any of the many human senses, such as touch, temperature, smell, taste, hearing, movement, hunger, or visual stimuli. [4]
The face is the feature which best distinguishes a person. Specialized regions of the human brain, such as the fusiform face area (FFA), enable facial recognition; when these are damaged, it may be impossible to recognize faces even of intimate family members. The pattern of specific organs, such as the eyes, or of parts of them, is used in biometric identification to uniquely identify individuals.
The shape of the face is influenced by the bone-structure of the skull, and each face is unique through the anatomical variation present in the bones of the viscerocranium (and neurocranium). [1] The bones involved in shaping the face are mainly the maxilla, mandible, nasal bone, zygomatic bone, and frontal bone. Also important are various soft tissues, such as fat, hair and skin (of which color may vary). [1]
The face changes over time, and features common in children or babies, such as prominent buccal fat-pads disappear over time, their role in the infant being to stabilize the cheeks during suckling. While the buccal fat-pads often diminish in size, the prominence of bones increase with age as they grow and develop. [1]
Facial shape – such as facial symmetry – is an important determinant of beauty.
Visible variable features of the face other than shapes and proportions include color (paleness, sun tan and genetic default pigmentation), hair (length, color, loss, graying), wrinkles, [5] [6] facial hair (e.g. beards), skin sagging, [6] discolorations [7] (dark spots, [6] freckles and eye circles [6] ), pore-variabilities, [8] skin blemishes (pimples, scars, burn marks). Many of these features can also vary over time due to aging, [6] [5] [7] skin care, nutrition, [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] the exposome [15] (such as harmful substances of the general environment, [11] [15] workplace and cosmetics), psychological factors, [11] and behavior (such as smoking, [15] sleep, [11] physical activity and sun damage [5] [7] [11] ).
Mechanisms underlying these include changes related to peptides (notably collagen), [7] [11] inflammation, [11] [13] production of various proteins (notably elastin and other ECM proteins), [13] the structure of subcutaneous tissue, [5] [7] hormones, [11] fibers (such as elastic fibers or elasticity) [7] and the skin barrier. [15]
The desire of many to look young for their age and/or attractive [6] has led to the establishment of a large cosmetics industry, [5] which is largely concerned with make-up that is applied on top of the skin (topically) to temporarily change appearance but it or dermatology also develop anti-aging products (and related products and procedures) that in some cases affect underlying biology and are partly applied preventively. [12] Facial traits are also used in biometrics [16] [17] and there have been attempts at reproducible quantifications. [7] [8] Skin health is considered a major factor in human well-being and the perception of health in humans. [12]
Genes are a major factor in the particular appearance of a person's face with the high similarity of faces of identical twins indicating that most of facial variability is determined genetically. [18]
Studies have identified genes and gene regions determining face shape and differences in various facial features. A 2021 study found that a version of a gene associated with lip thickness – possibly selected for due to adaption to cold climate via fat distribution – introgressed from ancient humans – Denisovans – into the modern humans Native Americans. [19] [20] [21] Another study found look-alike humans (doppelgängers) have genetic similarities, sharing genes affecting not only the face but also some phenotypes of physique and behavior. [22] [23] A study identified genes controlling the shape of the nose and chin. [24] Biological databases may be used to aggregate and discover associations between facial phenotypes and genes. [25] [26]
Faces are essential to expressing emotion, consciously or unconsciously. A frown denotes disapproval; a smile usually means someone is pleased. Being able to read emotion in another's face is "the fundamental basis for empathy and the ability to interpret a person's reactions and predict the probability of ensuing behaviors". One study used the Multimodal Emotion Recognition Test [27] to attempt to determine how to measure emotion. This research aimed at using a measuring device to accomplish what many people do every day: read emotion in a face. [28]
The muscles of the face play a prominent role in the expression of emotion, [1] and vary among different individuals, giving rise to additional diversity in expression and facial features. [29]
People are also relatively good at determining if a smile is real or fake. A recent study looked at individuals judging forced and genuine smiles. While young and elderly participants equally could tell the difference for smiling young people, the "older adult participants outperformed young adult participants in distinguishing between posed and spontaneous smiles". [30] This suggests that with experience and age, we become more accurate at perceiving true emotions across various age groups.
Gestalt psychologists theorize that a face is not merely a set of facial features, but is rather something meaningful in its form. This is consistent with the Gestalt theory that an image is seen in its entirety, not by its individual parts. According to Gary L. Allen, people adapted to respond more to faces during evolution as the natural result of being a social species. Allen suggests that the purpose of recognizing faces has its roots in the "parent-infant attraction, a quick and low-effort means by which parents and infants form an internal representation of each other, reducing the likelihood that the parent will abandon his or her offspring because of recognition failure". [31] Allen's work takes a psychological perspective that combines evolutionary theories with Gestalt psychology.
Research has indicated that certain areas of the brain respond particularly well to faces. The fusiform face area, within the fusiform gyrus, is activated by faces, and it is activated differently for shy and social people. A study confirmed that "when viewing images of strangers, shy adults exhibited significantly less activation in the fusiform gyri than did social adults". [32] Furthermore, particular areas respond more to a face that is considered attractive, as seen in another study: "Facial beauty evokes a widely distributed neural network involving perceptual, decision-making and reward circuits. In those experiments, the perceptual response across FFA and LOC remained present even when subjects were not attending explicitly to facial beauty". [33]
Cosmetic surgery can be used to alter the appearance of the facial features. [34] Maxillofacial surgery may also be used in cases of facial trauma, injury to the face and skin diseases. Severely disfigured individuals have recently received full face transplants and partial transplants of skin and muscle tissue. [35]
Caricatures often exaggerate facial features to make a face more easily recognized in association with a pronounced portion of the face of the individual in question—for example, a caricature of Osama bin Laden might focus on his facial hair and nose; a caricature of George W. Bush might enlarge his ears to the size of an elephant's; a caricature of Jay Leno may pronounce his head and chin; and a caricature of Mick Jagger might enlarge his lips. Exaggeration of memorable features helps people to recognize others when presented in a caricature form. [36]
By extension, anything which is the forward or world-facing part of a system which has internal structure is considered its "face", like the façade of a building. For example, a public relations or press officer might be called the "face" of the organization he or she represents. "Face" is also used metaphorically in a sociological context to refer to reputation or standing in society, particularly Chinese society, [37] and is spoken of as a resource which can be won or lost. Because of the association with individuality, the anonymous person is sometimes referred to as "faceless".
A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile. Among humans, a smile expresses delight, sociability, happiness, joy, or amusement. It is distinct from a similar but usually involuntary expression of anxiety known as a grimace. Although cross-cultural studies have shown that smiling is a means of communication throughout the world, there are large differences among different cultures, religions, and societies, with some using smiles to convey confusion, embarrassment or awkwardness.
Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science. While some core ideas in the field may be traced as far back as to early philosophical inquiries into emotion, the more modern branch of computer science originated with Rosalind Picard's 1995 paper on affective computing and her book Affective Computing published by MIT Press. One of the motivations for the research is the ability to give machines emotional intelligence, including to simulate empathy. The machine should interpret the emotional state of humans and adapt its behavior to them, giving an appropriate response to those emotions.
Facial expression is the motion and positioning of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers and are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information between humans, but they also occur in most other mammals and some other animal species.
Facial perception is an individual's understanding and interpretation of the face. Here, perception implies the presence of consciousness and hence excludes automated facial recognition systems. Although facial recognition is found in other species, this article focuses on facial perception in humans.
Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one's own face (self-recognition), is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing and intellectual functioning remain intact. The term originally referred to a condition following acute brain damage, but a congenital or developmental form of the disorder also exists, with a prevalence of 2.5%.
The fusiform gyrus, also known as the lateral occipitotemporal gyrus,is part of the temporal lobe and occipital lobe in Brodmann area 37. The fusiform gyrus is located between the lingual gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus above, and the inferior temporal gyrus below. Though the functionality of the fusiform gyrus is not fully understood, it has been linked with various neural pathways related to recognition. Additionally, it has been linked to various neurological phenomena such as synesthesia, dyslexia, and prosopagnosia.
Noonan syndrome (NS) is a genetic disorder that may present with mildly unusual facial features, short height, congenital heart disease, bleeding problems, and skeletal malformations. Facial features include widely spaced eyes, light-colored eyes, low-set ears, a short neck, and a small lower jaw. Heart problems may include pulmonary valve stenosis. The breast bone may either protrude or be sunken, while the spine may be abnormally curved. Intelligence is often normal. Complications of NS can include leukemia.
The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is a system to taxonomize human facial movements by their appearance on the face, based on a system originally developed by a Swedish anatomist named Carl-Herman Hjortsjö. It was later adopted by Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, and published in 1978. Ekman, Friesen, and Joseph C. Hager published a significant update to FACS in 2002. Movements of individual facial muscles are encoded by the FACS from slight different instant changes in facial appearance. It has proven useful to psychologists and to animators.
The fusiform face area is a part of the human visual system that is specialized for facial recognition. It is located in the inferior temporal cortex (IT), in the fusiform gyrus.
A dysmorphic feature is an abnormal difference in body structure. It can be an isolated finding in an otherwise normal individual, or it can be related to a congenital disorder, genetic syndrome or birth defect. Dysmorphology is the study of dysmorphic features, their origins and proper nomenclature. One of the key challenges in identifying and describing dysmorphic features is the use and understanding of specific terms between different individuals. Clinical geneticists and pediatricians are usually those most closely involved with the identification and description of dysmorphic features, as most are apparent during childhood.
Keppen–Lubinsky syndrome is an extremely rare congenital disorder. The minimal clinical criteria for the Keppen–Lubinsky syndrome are as follows: normal growth parameters at birth, postnatal growth failure, peculiar face with an aged appearance, skin tightly adherent to facial bones, generalized lipodystrophy, microcephaly, and development delay. Keppen-Lubinsky syndrome is caused by mutation in the inwardly rectifying K+ channels encoded by KCNJ6 gene.
Gerodermia osteodysplastica (GO) is a rare autosomal recessive connective tissue disorder included in the spectrum of cutis laxa syndromes.
Smoker's face describes the characteristic changes that happen to the faces of many people who smoke tobacco products. Smoking causes damage to the skin by depleting the skin of oxygen and nutrients. The general appearance is of accelerated ageing of the face, with a characteristic pattern of facial wrinkling and sallow coloration.
Keratolytic Winter erythema is a rare autosomal dominant skin disease of unknown cause which causes redness and peeling of the skin on the palms and soles. Onset, increased prominence and severity usually occurs during winter. It is a type of genodermatosis.
Wrinkly skin syndrome(WSS) is a rare genetic condition characterized by sagging, wrinkled skin, low skin elasticity, and delayed fontanelle (soft spot) closure, along with a range of other symptoms. The disorder exhibits an autosomal recessive inheritance pattern with mutations in the ATP6V0A2 gene, leading to abnormal glycosylation events. There are only about 30 known cases of WSS as of 2010. Given its rarity and symptom overlap with other dermatological conditions, reaching an accurate diagnosis is difficult and requires specialized dermatological testing. Limited treatment options are available but long-term prognosis is variable from patient to patient, based on individual case studies. Some skin symptoms recede with increasing age, while progressive neurological advancement of the disorder causes seizures and mental deterioration later in life for some patients.
Emotion perception refers to the capacities and abilities of recognizing and identifying emotions in others, in addition to biological and physiological processes involved. Emotions are typically viewed as having three components: subjective experience, physical changes, and cognitive appraisal; emotion perception is the ability to make accurate decisions about another's subjective experience by interpreting their physical changes through sensory systems responsible for converting these observed changes into mental representations. The ability to perceive emotion is believed to be both innate and subject to environmental influence and is also a critical component in social interactions. How emotion is experienced and interpreted depends on how it is perceived. Likewise, how emotion is perceived is dependent on past experiences and interpretations. Emotion can be accurately perceived in humans. Emotions can be perceived visually, audibly, through smell and also through bodily sensations and this process is believed to be different from the perception of non-emotional material.
Progeroid syndromes (PS) are a group of rare genetic disorders that mimic physiological aging, making affected individuals appear to be older than they are. The term progeroid syndrome does not necessarily imply progeria, which is a specific type of progeroid syndrome.
Injectable filler is a special type of substance made for injections into connective tissues, such as skin, cartilage or even bone, for cosmetic or medical purposes. The most common application of injectable fillers is to change one's facial appearance, but they also are used to reduce symptoms of osteoarthritis, treat tendon or ligament injuries, support bone and gum regeneration, and for other medical applications. Injectable fillers can be in the form of hydrogel or gels made from pulverized grafts.
The face inversion effect is a phenomenon where identifying inverted (upside-down) faces compared to upright faces is much more difficult than doing the same for non-facial objects.
The occipital face area (OFA) is a region of the human cerebral cortex which is specialised for face perception. The OFA is located on the lateral surface of the occipital lobe adjacent to the inferior occipital gyrus. The OFA comprises a network of brain regions including the fusiform face area (FFA) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) which support facial processing.
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: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2024 (link)Based on Walsh's phenotype analysis, King determined that one of the earliest paintings of Richard III, the 1510 "Arched Framed Portrait," best matched the genetic information. "We were still dealing with categories [of color] because we're not at the quantitative level yet," Walsh said of her determination of Richard III's hair and eye color. "[King] wanted something physical to see, and that's what spurred me to move toward the quantitative so strongly. Because I could always say to someone, 'blue' or 'blonde,' and they would say, 'I need to see this physically.' So that is what I'm working on now. I want to produce that result." Walsh has gathered DNA phenotype data from 2,000 Irish, Greek and U.S. individuals and is currently collecting data from 3,000 additional individuals from those same countries in order to create a phenotype-genotype database and prediction model. For forensic purposes, she would like to be able to start with a "blank person" and with a sample of DNA, determine the actual eye, hair and skin pigmentation.
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