Pareidolia: Difference between revisions

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Apophenia is the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data.
Apophenia is the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data. Pareidolia is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one detects an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.
Pareidolia is a type of apophenia involving the perception of images or sounds in random stimuli.
 
A common example is the perception of a face within an inanimate object—the headlights and grill of an automobile may appear to be "grinning". People around the world see the "Man in the Moon".[8] People sometimes see the face of a religious figure in a piece of toast or in the grain of a piece of wood. There is strong evidence that psychedelic drugs tend to induce or enhance pareidolia.[citation needed]
 
Pareidolia usually occurs as a result of the fusiform face area—which is the part of the human brain responsible for seeing faces—mistakenly interpreting an object, shape or configuration with some kind of perceived "face-like" features as being a face.


=Example=
=Example=