Dogs and Face Recognition and MRI

[BillT]

http://www.alnmag.com/news/2015/08/dogs-process-faces-specialized-brain-area?et_cid=4716887&et_rid=651558105&type=cta

Dogs evolved from wolves 10-30 thousand years ago. It would be nice if they were able to compare their results with wolves.
However, its probably not easy to train a wolf to look at a screen for 30 seconds while in a MRI.

[LizStreithorst]

Thanks.  I'm in to dogs and I'm into Neuropsychology.  I've read everything by Oliver Sacks.  He suffers from "face blindness", you know.  I have the same thing but nowhere near as bad as he has it.  Until I read about it in one of his books I thought it was a personality flaw.  I found out differently.  Face recognition is quite variable in humans.  I knew one lady, a retired school teacher, who would meet one of her middle school students as an adult and be able to call her by name.  Remarkable.

[BillT]

Yeah, that stuff is fascinating.

Too bad Oliver Sacks has cancer and is expecting to die soon.


You would probably like the book: The Mind of a Mnemonist, by the Russian Pyshologist Luria.

It describes a guy who had both extreme synaesthesia (where senses get mixed like getting a flavor when you see a color), would get lots of associated facts come to mind based on the synaesthetic sensations, and had great difficulty forgetting anything.
This made his life difficult.

[LizStreithorst]

I didn't know that Sacks was sick with cancer.  When he dies it will be a huge loss to humanity.  I'll look up the book you suggested on Amazon.  thank you.