document_title: Blue law

question_text: why can't you buy alcohol on sunday before noon

question_tokens: why ca n 't you buy alcohol on sunday before noon

text: Blue law

text: History[edit]

text: The very first known law regarding prohibition of Sunday labor for religious reasons was in 538 at the Third Council of Orléans.[6]

text: The first occurrence of the phrase blue laws so far found is in the New-York Mercury of March 3, 1755, where the writer imagines a future newspaper praising the revival of "our Connecticut's old Blue Laws". In his 1781 book General History of Connecticut, the Reverend Samuel Peters (1735–1826) used it to describe various laws first enacted by Puritan colonies in the 17th century that prohibited various activities, recreational as well as commercial, on Sunday (Saturday evening through Sunday night). Sometimes the sale of certain types of merchandise was prohibited, and in some cases all retail and business activity.

text: Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that blue laws were originally printed on blue paper. Rather, the word blue was used in the 17th century as a disparaging reference to rigid moral codes and those who observed them, particularly in blue-stocking, a reference to Oliver Cromwell's supporters in the parliament of 1653.[7] Moreover, although Reverend Peters claimed that the term blue law was originally used by Puritan colonists, his work has since been found to be unreliable.[8] In any event, Peters never asserted that the blue laws were originally printed on blue paper, and this has come to be regarded as an example of false etymology, another version of which is that the laws were first bound in books with blue covers.

text: As Protestant moral reformers organized the Sabbath reform in nineteenth-century America, calls for the enactment and/or enforcement of stricter Sunday laws developed. Numerous Americans were arrested for working, keeping an open shop, drinking alcohol, traveling, and recreating on Sundays. Erwin Fahlbusch and Geoffrey William Bromiley write that throughout their existence, organizations advocating first-day Sabbatarianism, such as the Lord's Day Alliance in North America and the Lord's Day Observance Society in the British Isles, were supported by labor unions in lobbying "to prevent secular and commercial interests from hampering freedom of worship and from exploiting workers."[9] For example, the United States Congress was supported by the Lord's Day Alliance in securing "a day of rest for city postal clerks whose hours of labor, unlike those of city mail carriers, were largely unregulated."[1] In Canada, the Ligue du Dimanche, a Roman Catholic Sunday league, supported the Lord's Day Act in 1923 and promoted first-day Sabbatarian legislation.[10][11] Beginning in the 1840s, workingmen, Jews, Seventh Day Baptists, free-thinkers, and other groups began to organize opposition. Throughout the century, Sunday laws served as a major source of church-state controversy and as an issue that drove the emergence of modern American minority-rights politics.[12] On the other hand, the more recent Dies Domini, written by Pope John Paul II in 1998, advocates Sunday legislation in that it protects civil servants and workers; the North Dakota Catholic Conference in 2011 likewise maintained that blue laws, in accordance with the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, "ensure that, for reasons of economic productivity, citizens are not denied time for rest and divine worship."[13] Similarly, Chief Justice Earl Warren, while acknowledging the partial religious origin of blue laws, acknowledged their "secular purpose they served by providing a benefit to workers at the same time that they enhanced labor productivity."[2]

text: Many European countries[which?] still place strong restrictions on store opening hours on Sundays, an example being Germany's Ladenschlussgesetz.

text: Canada[edit]

text: The Lord's Day Act, which since 1906 had prohibited business transactions from taking place on Sundays, was declared unconstitutional in the 1985 case R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd. Calgary police officers witnessed several transactions at the Big M Drug Mart, all of which occurred on a Sunday. Big M was charged with a violation of the Lord's Day Act. A provincial court ruled that the Lord's Day Act was unconstitutional, but the Crown proceeded to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. In a unanimous 6–0 decision, the Lord's Day Act was ruled an infringement of the freedom of conscience and religion defined in section 2(a) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.[14]

text: A Toronto referendum in 1950 allowed only team sports to be played professionally on Sunday. Theatre performances, movie screenings, and horse racing were not permitted until the 1960s.[15]

text: The Supreme Court later concluded, in R. v. Edwards Books and Art Ltd., [1986] (2 S.C.R. 713) that Ontario's Retail Business Holiday Act, which required some Sunday closings, did not violate the Charter because it did not have a religious purpose. Nonetheless, as of today, virtually all provincial Sunday Closing laws have ceased to exist. Some were struck down by provincial courts, but most were simply abrogated,[16] often due to competitive reasons where out-of-province or foreign merchants were open.

text: Cook Islands, Tonga and Niue[edit]

text: In the Cook Islands, blue laws were the first written legislation, enacted by the London Missionary Society in 1827, with the consent of ariki (chiefs). In Tonga, the Vava'u Code (1839) was inspired by Methodist missionary teachings, and was a form of blue law. In Niue, certain activities remain forbidden on Sunday, reflecting the country's history of observing Christian Sabbath tradition.

text: Denmark[edit]

text: In Denmark the closing laws restricting retail trade on Sundays have been abolished with effect from October 1, 2012. From then on retail trade is only restricted on public holidays (New Years Day, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Day of Prayer, Ascension Day, Whit Sunday, Whit Monday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day) and on Constitution Day, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve (on New Year's Eve from 3 pm only). On these days almost all shops will remain closed. Exempt are bakeries, DIYs, garden centres, gas stations and smaller supermarkets.[17]

text: England and Wales[edit]

text: Before 1994[edit]

text: Prior to 1994, trading laws forbade sale of certain products on a Sunday; the distinction between those that could and could not be sold was increasingly seen as arbitrary, and the laws were inadequately enforced and widely flouted. For example, some supermarkets would treat the relatively modest fines arising as a business cost and open nonetheless.

text: Since 1994[edit]

text: The Sunday Trading Act 1994 relaxed restrictions on Sunday trading. This produced vocal opposition from bodies such as the Keep Sunday Special campaign, and the Lord's Day Observance Society: on religious grounds, on the grounds that it would increase consumerism, and that it would reduce shop assistants' weekend leisure time.

text: The legislation permits large shops (those with a relevant floor area in excess of 280 square metres) to open for up to six hours on Sunday between the hours of 10 am and 6 pm. Small shops, those with an area of below 280 square metres, are free to set their own Sunday trading times. Some large shops, such as off-licences, service stations and garages, are exempt from the restrictions.

text: Some very large shops (e.g. department stores) open for longer than 6 hours on a Sunday by allowing customers in to browse 30 minutes prior to allowing them to make a purchase, since the 6 hour restriction only applies to time during which the shop may make sales.

text: Christmas Day and Easter Sunday are non-trading days. This applies even to garden centres, which earlier had been trading over Easter, but not to small shops (those with an area of below 280 square metres).[18]

text: Northern Ireland[edit]

text: Prior to 2008, no football was permitted to be played on Sundays by clubs affiliated to the Irish Football Association in Northern Ireland.[19]

text: Shops with a floor area of over 280 square metres may only open from 1 to 6pm on Sundays.[20]

text: United States[edit]

text: In the United States, judges have defended blue laws "in terms of their secular benefit to workers", holding that "the laws were essential to social well-being".[3] Chief Justice Stephen Johnson Field, with regard to Sunday blue laws, stated:[3]

text: Its requirement is a cessation from labor. In its enactment, the legislature has given the sanction of law to a rule of conduct, which the entire civilized world recognizes as essential to the physical and moral well-being of society. Upon no subject is there such a concurrence of opinion, among philosophers, moralists and statesmen of all nations, as on the necessity of periodical cessation from labor. One day in seven is the rule, founded in experience and sustained by science. ... The prohibition of secular business on Sunday is advocated on the ground that by it the general welfare is advanced, labor protected, and the moral and physical well-being of society promoted.

text: Many states prohibit selling alcohol for on and off-premises sales in one form or another on Sundays at some restricted time, under the idea that people should be in church on Sunday morning, or at least not drinking.[21][22]

text: Another feature of blue laws in the United States restricts the purchase of particular items on Sundays. Some of these laws restrict the ability to buy cars, groceries, office supplies, and housewares among other things. Though most of these laws have been relaxed or repealed in most states, they are still enforced in some other states.

text: In Texas, for example, blue laws prohibited selling housewares such as pots, pans, and washing machines on Sunday until 1985. In Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, car dealerships continue to operate under blue-law prohibitions in which an automobile may not be purchased or traded on a Sunday. Maryland permits Sunday automobile sales only in the counties of Charles, Prince George's, Montgomery, and Howard; similarly, Michigan restricts Sunday sales to only those counties with a population of less than 130,000. Texas and Utah prohibit car dealerships from operating over consecutive weekend days. In some cases these laws were created or retained with the support of those whom they affected, to allow them a day off each week without fear of their competitors still being open.[23]

text: Blue laws may also prohibit retail activity on days other than Sunday. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine (which was previously part of Massachusetts),[24] for example, blue laws prohibit most retail stores, including grocery stores, from opening on Thanksgiving and Christmas.[25]

text: Research regarding the effect of the repeal of blue laws has been conducted, with Professor Elesha Coffman of Baylor University writing:[26]

text: Regarding culture, the impact of vanishing blue laws could be larger. A study in New Mexico in 2006 found a sharp increase in drunken driving on Sundays after that state dropped its Sunday ban on packaged alcohol sales. A broader study published by MIT and Notre Dame economists in 2008 found that the repeal of blue laws led to decreased church attendance, decreased donations to churches, and increased alcohol and drug use among religious individuals. These wide-ranging effects cannot easily be pinpointed to specific causes, but one of the latter study's authors, Daniel Hungerman, suggested to Christianity Today that blue laws might have been fulfilling their original intent, to keep people pious.[26]

text: Court cases[edit]

text: Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, religious and ethno-cultural minorities arrested for violating state and local blue laws appealed their convictions to state supreme courts. In Specht v. Commonwealth (1848), for example, German Seventh Day Baptists in Pennsylvania employed attorney Thaddeus Stevens to challenge the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's Sunday law. As in cases in other states, litigants pointed to the provisions of state constitutions protecting religious liberty and maintained that Sunday laws were a blatant violation. Though typically unsuccessful (most state supreme courts upheld the constitutionality of Sunday laws), these constitutional challenges helped set a pattern by which subsequent moral minorities would seek to protect religious freedom and minority rights.[27]

text: The Supreme Court of the United States held in its landmark case, McGowan v. Maryland (1961), that Maryland's blue laws violated neither the Free Exercise Clause nor the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It approved the state's blue law restricting commercial activities on Sunday, noting that while such laws originated to encourage attendance at Christian churches, the contemporary Maryland laws were intended to serve "to provide a uniform day of rest for all citizens" on a secular basis and to promote the secular values of "health, safety, recreation, and general well-being" through a common day of rest. That this day coincides with Christian Sabbath is not a bar to the state's secular goals; it neither reduces its effectiveness for secular purposes nor prevents adherents of other religions from observing their own holy days.[28]

text: There were four landmark Sunday-law cases altogether in 1961. The other three were Gallagher v. Crown Kosher Super Market of Mass., Inc., 366 U.S. 617 (1961); Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599 (1961); Two Guys from Harrison vs. McGinley, 366 U.S. 582 (1961).[29] Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that "the State seeks to set one day apart from all others as a day of rest, repose, recreation and tranquility--a day which all members of the family and community have the opportunity to spend and enjoy together, a day on which there exists relative quiet and disassociation from the everyday intensity of commercial activities, a day on which people may visit friends and relative who are not available during working days."[2]

text: In March 2006, Texas judges upheld the state blue law that requires car dealerships to close either Saturday or Sunday each weekend.[30]


document_title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 5)

question_text: who plays senara on marvel's agents of shield

question_tokens: who plays senara on marvel 's agents of shield

root

text: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 5)

text: Episodes[edit]

text:
No.
overall
No. in
season
Title
Directed by
Written by
Original air date
U.S. viewers
(millions)

89

90
1

2
"Orientation"
Jesse Bochco

David Solomon
Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen

DJ Doyle
December 1, 2017 (2017-12-01)
2.54[1]

An unknown group seizes Phil Coulson, Melinda May, Daisy Johnson, Jemma Simmons, Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie, and Yo-Yo Rodriguez and transports them to a space station through a monolith; Leo Fitz is left behind. Upon arrival, the team is heralded by Virgil, who dies soon after. They quickly regroup and meet Deke, who reveals that the space station, known as the Lighthouse, was built nearly ninety years prior. Hoping to send a message back to Earth, May and Simmons discover it is no longer habitable and appears to have been torn apart by a cataclysmic event. At the same time, Coulson discovers that the monolith transported them not through space, but through time. Elsewhere, Mack and Yo-Yo are held captive by the Kree, who maintain control of the station by encouraging bloodshed among its inhabitants. Back in the station, the team attempts to blend in by agreeing to work for Grill and meets Tess, who saves them during the Renewal. Coulson goes with Tess to learn more about Virgil's message and finds a hidden notebook. Meanwhile, Simmons is taken to meet Kasius, the Kree leader of the station, and is inducted as one of his servants. Later on, Johnson confronts Deke in his framework simulation, where he reveals she is the reason the Earth was torn apart.

91
3
"A Life Spent"
Kevin Hooks
Nora Zuckerman & Lilla Zuckerman
December 8, 2017 (2017-12-08)
1.93[2]

In preparation for Lady Basha's arrival, Simmons is given the task of helping an Inhuman champion control her abilities for her exhibition ceremony. Simmons is successful but becomes distraught when Kasius sells his champion to Lady Basha. While the team adapt to their new jobs, Grill becomes suspicious of the new arrivals and sends one of his men to spy on them. During a space expedition, Coulson, May, Mack, and Tess struggle to make sense of Virgil's notebook and discover a radio transmission supposedly originating from the Earth's surface. Grill's spy reports back, only to be framed as a traitor and exiled to die on Earth. Meanwhile, Yo-Yo helps Johnson get ahold of a Kree tablet to try and save Simmons. However, her mission is thwarted by Deke, who reports her to Kasius. Johnson is captured and taken to become his new champion.

92
4
"A Life Earned"
Stan Brooks
Drew Z. Greenberg
December 15, 2017 (2017-12-15)
1.84[3]

Johnson meets Ben, one of Kasius' other champions, capable of telepathy. Using Ben to corroborate their story, Kasius interrogates Johnson and Simmons about the others. They are able to convince Kasius they came alone, though he remains suspicious. During the interrogation, Ben learns that Kasius intends to destroy the station and everyone on it once he acquires enough profits to leave. Deke returns to the others to gather new information as they learn about the mysterious Level 35. Recognizing his father's voice on the radio transmission, Deke agrees to help them gain access to the restricted floor. There, they discover that Kasius is attempting to breed Inhumans. May also discovers Deke lied about Johnson's whereabouts, but get interrupted by Sinara's arrival. Coulson leaves with Deke, while May fights her alone. Meanwhile, Grill sends Mack to confront someone who owes him payment. Later, Fitz is revealed to be one of the bidders who have arrived for Johnson's exhibition.

93
5
"Rewind"
Jesse Bochco
Craig Titley
December 22, 2017 (2017-12-22)
2.40[4]

Shortly after the others are taken from the diner, Fitz is taken into military custody and interrogated about their whereabouts, including the assassination attempt on General Talbot, and deaths of Jeffrey Mace and Holden Radcliffe. For the next six months, Fitz is given special privileges that would hopefully allow him to locate the team but fails. With help from Lance Hunter, Fitz escapes the military facility and tracks down Enoch, the man who took the others. Enoch explains that a prophecy foretold these events and takes them to meet Robin, the daughter of Charles from Spacetime, who can also tell the future but through drawings. Tracked by the military, Enoch helps them escape to a secret bunker, where Fitz learns that he was left behind so he could save the team. Determined to help them, Fitz and Hunter break back into the same military facility to obtain a cryogenic pod. In the warehouse, they find all their old S.H.I.E.L.D. tech, including the Zephyr, which they use to escape. Back in the secret bunker, Fitz is put to sleep for the next 74 years and is awoken by Enoch, who prepares him for their arrival at the Lighthouse.

94
6
"Fun & Games"
Clark Gregg
Brent Fletcher
January 5, 2018 (2018-01-05)
2.49[5]

Down in the station, the Kree have harvested some of the youth for an unscheduled Terrigenesis ceremony. Flint, a friend of Tess, experiences a successful Terrigenesis and is taken into hiding with the team by Yo-Yo. Tess is killed and hanged for Flint's disappearance. During a dinner with the other bidders, Fitz quickly proves himself as a formidable character, earning Kasius' respect. The first exhibition is then held between Ben and May, resulting in May being sent to the surface, while Ben is killed for lying during Johnson's interrogation. Meanwhile, Grill finds the team and holds them captive, until Flint saves them using geokinesis against Grill, killing him. The unexpected arrival of Kasius' brother prompts Sinara to battle Johnson for her exhibition. During which, Johnson, Fitz, and Simmons are able to subdue the others and escape. During the escape, Simmons proposes to Fitz.

95
7
"Together or Not at All"
Brad Turner
Matt Owens
January 12, 2018 (2018-01-12)
2.31[6]

Johnson, Fitz, and Simmons are hunted throughout the station and discover the station is being sustained by gravitonium. Fitz is shot during the chase. Deke finds them and takes them to the rest of the team. Reunited, the team plot their escape to the Earth's surface by using a trawler and Deke's antigravity device. After learning about Tess' death, Flint decides to stay on the station to protect the remaining inhabitants. Mack and Yo-Yo agree to stay behind and help him. Coulson, Johnson, Fitz, Simmons, and Deke fly to the surface, but get caught in the gravity storm. Meanwhile, Kasius kills his brother and plots to regain his father's acceptance by recapturing Johnson with help from Sinara. On the surface, Enoch finds May, but their meeting is cut short by the approaching gravity storm. A mysterious figure takes them to safety, where they are greeted by an elderly Robin.

96
8
"The Last Day"
Nina Lopez-Corrado
James C. Oliver & Sharla Oliver
January 19, 2018 (2018-01-19)
2.41[7]

Coulson, Johnson, Fitz, Simmons, and Deke survive the crash and reunite with May in the Zephyr. They meet Samuel Voss, an acquaintance of Deke's father. Up on the Lighthouse, Kasius punishes the inhabitants by cutting off their resources. Flint, Mack, and Yo-Yo go to retrieve the weapons hidden by Fitz and discover Kasius has released the Vrellnexians onto the lower levels. They defeat the Vrellnexians and rescue the remaining inhabitants. On the surface, the team struggle to get answers from Robin and find a machine built into the Zephyr. While Fitz and Simmons attempt to remove Johnson's inhibitor, May and Coulson find a shard of the time monolith in Voss' locker. Deke questions Voss about the shard, which belonged to his parents, and gets knocked out. Voss then tries to kill Johnson and impales Robin to prevent her from giving the team answers. Before dying, Robin is comforted by May as she reveals their history and finally tells May how to save the world, which requires Flint. In the past, May is shown taking care of Robin and encouraging Fitz to build his machine so they can travel through time.

97
9
"Best Laid Plans"
Garry A. Brown
George Kitson
January 26, 2018 (2018-01-26)
2.27[8]

As the gravity storm worsens, the team attempt to relaunch the Zephyr. May reveals that using the shard, Flint can recreate the monolith allowing the team to travel back through time. Similar to the Lighthouse, Fitz and Simmons find gravitonium on the Zephyr and realize the designs were manufactured by Fitz himself. On the station, Flint, Mack, and Yo-Yo successfully gain control of the lower levels. Tess is resurrected by Kasius and sent to relay demands for him, who threatens to detonate explosives killing everyone if they are not met. Mack and Yo-Yo retaliate by placing the explosives on Level 35, the medical floor, which would prevent Kasius from breeding more Inhumans. During a standoff with Kasius, Flint evacuates the inhabitants to the upper levels and uses the remaining explosives to separate them from the lower levels, out of Kasius' reach. Using the gravity storm to her advantage, May navigates the Zephyr into space as Johnson battles Sinara again, this time killing her. Johnson then contacts Mack while the team are heading for the Lighthouse.

98
10
"Past Life"
Eric Laneuville
DJ Doyle
February 2, 2018 (2018-02-02)
2.22[9]

While Enoch stays on the Zephyr, the team focus on getting to Flint and rescuing the other Inhumans from captivity. Distraught over Sinara's death, Kasius infects Tye, the Inhuman trainer, with odium, a substance that excites maniacal behavior and sends him after the team. During a fight with Tye, Coulson gets infected with the odium. Kasius' seer is revealed to be Yo-Yo from the future, one who has lived through the time loop and endured endless torture. She reveals that the team's ultimate return will bring the end of the world and that the only solution is to let Coulson succumb to his infection. As Flint recreates the monolith, Mack leaves to find Yo-Yo and witnesses her future self's death by Kasius, who consumes the remaining odium and fights him. With help from Simmons, Mack kills Kasius and reunites with Yo-Yo, who is still alive in their timeline. Deke returns to the Zephyr in time to save Enoch and fix the machine, although at the cost of both of their lives, as the team returns to the present.

99
11
"All the Comforts of Home"[10]
Kate Woods
Drew Z. Greenberg
March 2, 2018 (2018-03-02)
TBD

100
12
"The Real Deal"[11]
Kevin Tancharoen
Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen & Jeffrey Bell
March 9, 2018 (2018-03-09)
TBD

101
13
"Principia"[12]
Brad Turner
Craig Titley
March 16, 2018 (2018-03-16)
TBD

102
14
"The Devil Complex"[13]
TBA
TBA
March 23, 2018 (2018-03-23)
TBD

tag: table

text: Salli Richardson-Whitfield directed an episode of the season.[14]

tag: p

text: Cast and characters[edit]

text: Main[edit]

text:
Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson[15]
Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May[15]
Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson / Quake[16]
Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz[15]
Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons[15]
Henry Simmons as Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie[15]
Natalia Cordova-Buckley as Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez[17]

tag: ul

text: Recurring[edit]

text:
Jeff Ward as Deke Shaw[18][19]
Joel Stoffer as Enoch[20]
Eve Harlow as Tess[19]
Dominic Rains as Kasius[20]
Florence Faivre as Sinara[20]
Pruitt Taylor Vince as Grill[19]
Coy Stewart as Flint[19]
Catherine Dent as Hale[12]

text: Notable guests[edit]

text:
Lola Glaudini as Polly Hinton[21]
Nick Blood as Lance Hunter[22]
Brian Patrick Wade as Carl Creel[10]
Briana Venskus as Piper[10]
Spencer Treat Clark as Werner von Strucker[12]

text: Production[edit]

text: Development[edit]

text: In January 2017, ahead of the mid-season premiere of the fourth season, ABC's Channing Dungey said that she was "very bullish" about S.H.I.E.L.D.'s future, feeling that "the episodes just keep getting better and stronger".[23] The series was renewed for a fifth season of 22 episodes on May 11, with ABC looking to lower the cost of the series moving forward,[24][25] by reducing its budget and licensing fee.[26] Asked whether she had considered giving the season a shorter episode order, Dungey noted that every season of the series had been 22 episodes long, and she felt its prior success in delayed viewership and overseas justified continuing that. She added that the "show has continued to grow creatively every season. I feel like last season [was] its strongest creatively yet. I'm very excited for what we have planned for Season 5."[27] It was reported that Disney, the parent company of Marvel Television, ABC Studios, and ABC, had given a mandate to ABC to renew Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "despite the desire by some at the network to end the series".[28]

text: Writing[edit]

text: In May 2017, ahead of the fifth season renewal, showrunner and executive producer Jed Whedon said the writers were not sure what would happen in the season, and that it would be "by the seat of our pants."[29] The season explores the ramifications of Phil Coulson making a deal with Ghost Rider at the end of the previous season, as well as the groundwork laid by Aida for humans to fear S.H.I.E.L.D. and Inhumans. Whedon stated, "The public perception of S.H.I.E.L.D. is at an all-time low, so we have not resolved that, and there will be still more fallout from it."[30] Moving beyond the Framework reality established at the end of season four, Tancharoen said the emotional impact from the characters' experiences would "be something that resonates throughout the season", especially for Fitz and Mack.[31] When asked if the season would be broken into pods as with season four, executive producer Jeffrey Bell said, "A 22-episode arc is a lot for people to hold onto. By breaking it up into either smaller arcs or different pods, by introducing a set of antagonists and putting them down, or moving from space to space, our experience has been that it's something the viewers enjoy, and it makes it a little easier to digest when you're telling some of these stories." However, Whedon noted that it would depend on how the season would be aired as to where the story is broken up.[30] The season ultimately was broken into two pod story arcs, with each pod having a different emphases, but the whole season having an arc "that will pay off".[32] The writers for the season began work at the end of May 2017.[16]

text: First pod[edit]

text: The first pod of the season was informally referred to by the production team as S.H.I.E.L.D. in Space.[32] Ahead of the season premiere, executive producer Maurissa Tancharoen said that "every year we reset the series, and this year we definitely knew that it would be the most giant reset to date [with the characters going to space]. Just creatively across the board for everyone, art direction, all of it, our sets, you'll see an overhaul."[33] On the move to space, Whedon commented, "Last year was about tearing everybody apart. We spent a lot of time doing that ... So our goal this year was... putting [this] family together in an intense situation [that] will end up causing drama internally, inevitably.... we've spent this many years with them, let's throw them on the craziest roller coaster adventure we could think of."[34] The main characters eventually return home to their time period.[35]

text: Second pod[edit]

text: The second pod of the season includes the series' 100th episode, which Whedon and Tancharoen described as a "game changer" that would "shake up" the rest of the pod emotionally, to the point that "nothing will be the same after" it. Also, at the end of February 2018, the writers were planning the end of the pod, and were planning for the final episode to be able to serve as both a season and series finale, with some elements that could be adjusted based on whether the series was renewed for a sixth season or not. Whedon added, "we're ready for if this is the end. We're definitely going to make it rewarding either way."[36]

text: Casting[edit]

text: Main cast members Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge, and Henry Simmons return from previous seasons as Phil Coulson, Melinda May, Daisy Johnson / Quake, Leo Fitz, Jemma Simmons, and Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie, respectively.[15] Before the 2017 New York Comic-Con, it was revealed that Natalia Cordova-Buckley had been promoted to series regular for the season, after recurring in the past two seasons as Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez.[17] In September 2017, former series regular Nick Blood was announced as returning to reprise his role of Lance Hunter. Blood left the series during the third season, to star in the spin-off series Marvel's Most Wanted, which never came to fruition.[22] Adrianne Palicki, who portrayed Bobbi Morse and also left in the third season for Most Wanted with Blood, expressed interest in October 2017 in returning to guest star in the season, saying she "would absolutely come back" if asked.[37]

text: Also returning from earlier in the series are Joel Stoffer as Enoch,[20] who was simply credited as "silhouetted man" in his previous appearance,[38] and Lola Glaudini as Polly Hinton.[21] Polly's daughter Robin also appears, portrayed by multiple actresses,[39] after the character made an uncredited appearance in "Ascension":[40] Lexy Kolker appears as 7-years-old Robin, Ava Kolker appears as 12-year-old Robin,[39] and Willow Hale appears as an older Robin, when she is also known as The Seer.[39][41] Brian Patrick Wade and Spencer Treat Clark return from earlier seasons as Carl Creel and Werner von Strucker,[10][12] along with Briana Venskus and Maximilian Osinski as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Piper and Davis, respectively,[10][11] The characters Lash and Hive will return from earlier seasons for the series' 100th episode.[42]

text: Jeff Ward was cast in a recurring role in August 2017,[18] and was revealed in October to be portraying Deke Shaw, alongside other newcomers Eve Harlow as Tess, Coy Stewart as Flint, and Pruitt Taylor Vince as Grill.[19] Other recurring guests include Dominic Rains as Kasius, Florence Faivre as Sinara, Jay Hunter as a Kree watch commander, Tunisha Hubbard as Ava,[20] and Catherine Dent as Hale.[12]

text: Design[edit]

text: After leaving the series during the fourth season, costume designer Ann Foley returned for the first two episodes of the fifth season, before handing over to Whitney Galitz, who had assisted her on the previous few seasons, and Christann Chanell.[43] The opening for "Orientation" is reminiscent of the sequence for "4,722 Hours", forgoing the title card and having the typeface silently fading onto the screen.[44] The subsequent episodes of the season feature a title card with the series name against a backdrop of a destroyed Earth.[45]

text: Filming[edit]

text: Filming for the season began on July 20, 2017.[46][47] In May 2017, Gregg expressed interest in directing an episode in the season,[48] and confirmed that September he would be directing an episode,[49] which was the sixth of the season, "Fun & Games". Gregg felt the idea of directing was "daunting" as he would need to be doing "five weeks of double duty", needing to act in addition to the various aspects of directing the episode.[50] He reached out to fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. directors Kevin Tancharoen, Billy Gierhart, and Jesse Bochco to get tips on filming for the series.[51] Bennet felt Gregg was able to bring out performances from the cast "that another director probably wouldn't have been able to because he knows the characters so well."[52] Gregg added that he had "shorthand with [the other actors] about what we want to try to do, ways the script could give us a chance to push us into new territory. They all also have deep and interesting ideas that helped me." Gregg also received a deeper appreciation for some of the other departments on the series he normally does not encounter on a regular basis and the work they contribute to each episode.[50]

text: Marvel Cinematic Universe tie-ins[edit]

text: In terms of having connections to Marvel's Inhumans, Whedon felt it was doubtful, but noted "we also want there to be a bigger reward for people who watch all of [the MCU series], so they'll start to see that there's lines connecting it. It's more fun for people who are playing the whole game, but if you don't, you'll still have a great rollercoaster ride."[53] In November 2017, Whedon said that the season would not have moved the characters to space if the recent MCU films like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Thor: Ragnarok had not been exploring that part of the MCU, but that this would remain a "thematic tie". He explained that they had moved on from the overt tie-ins with the MCU films that the series utilized in earlier seasons because "we have our own mythology. That started to be much more interesting to us, and hopefully to the audience, just digging that stuff up. No one wants to come to see our show to see another show."[33] The season features the Kree, an alien race that previously appeared in the first, second and third seasons, and in the film Guardians of the Galaxy.[54] The fictional element Gravitonium also returns, having first appeared in the first season.[55]

text: Release[edit]

text: Broadcast[edit]

text: The season began airing in the United States on ABC on December 1, 2017,[52] beginning once Inhumans finished airing its episodes.[56] It is set to run for 22 episodes,[25] with a short hiatus for the airing of the 2018 Winter Olympics between "Past Life" and "All the Comforts of Home".[35] The season is intended to conclude on May 18, 2018.[57]

text: The fifth season moved to a Friday timeslot, alongside the seventh season of ABC's Once Upon a Time, with ABC chief Channing Dungey explaining, "We've turned Friday into more of a destination for our fantasy and science fiction fans. Once Upon a Time and S.H.I.E.L.D. are airing on the same night for the first time, which is giving many fans of both shows what they've been asking for for a long time."[58] Andy Kubitz, executive vice president for program planning and scheduling at ABC, added that ABC had "confidence that [the S.H.I.E.L.D.] core audience... [would] travel with it" to its new Friday time slot. He continued, "The great thing about Friday night for these shows is it gives three days of downtime for a lot of these younger viewers to be able to catch up on it. You've got Saturday and Sunday viewing that will be able to be counted into our C3 to help us monetize it."[26]

text: Marketing[edit]

text: The main cast of the season appeared at New York Comic Con on October 7, 2017, where they promoted the season and debuted the first 20 minutes of the first episode of the season.[59][52] A shortened version of the footage was released by ABC and Marvel on November 26, 2017, as a sneak peek before the season premiere later that week.[60] The cast and executive producers will appear at WonderCon 2018 on March 24, to promote the rest of the season, and show a sneak peak of an upcoming episode.[61]

text: "The Road to 100"[edit]

text: In December 2017, Marvel announced the "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: The Road to 100" art program to commemorate the series reaching 100 episodes. The program features five posters, one for each season of the series, representing "key pivotal moments of each season". The art also appeared as variant covers to select titles published by Marvel Comics in March 2018. Megan Thomas Bradner, Vice President of Development and Production, Live Action at Marvel Television, called reaching 100 episodes "quite a feat... and it felt special enough to share with the fans that got us here. By working with some of our favorite comic artists, we felt we could show a large variety of meaningful moments and the characters that helped get us to a 100." She added that the program "commemorates these creators, the actors, the characters and a hundred amazing stories".[62]

text: The first poster, highlighting season one, was created by Dale Keown. It features four panels, showcasing the moment Coulson and Grant Ward approached Skye in her van from the pilot, Coulson learning he survived the Battle of New York from the T.A.H.I.T.I. program and a drug from a half-dissected Kree alien corpse, the moment Grant Ward revealed he was a Hydra agent by killing Victoria Hand, and Fitz giving Simmons the last remaining oxygen tank and declaring his love for her in the season one finale.[62] The second poster, highlighting season two, was created by Daniel Acuña. The scenes depicted are Coulson writing the Inhuman map on a wall; Daisy coming out of her Terrigenesis; the S.H.I.E.L.D. team, Bobbi Morse, Lance Hunter, and the "real S.H.I.E.L.D." logo; and May cradling the deceased body of Katya Belyakov.[63] The third poster, highlighting season three, was created by Nick Bradshaw. The poster shows the S.H.I.E.L.D. team and Hive, along with the Hydra logo breaking the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo and its tentacles covering much of the poster. Specific moments highlighted include Fitz and Simmons after she has been pulled from the portal to Maveth, Coulson killing Ward on Maveth, and the formation of the Secret Warriors.[64] The fourth poster, highlighting season four, was created by Rahzzah. It highlighted the introduction of Ghost Rider, Life Model Decoys (LMD) and the Framework reality, Jeffrey Mace sacrificing himself in the Framework, and Coulson's kiss with the May LMD.[65] The fifth and final poster, highlighting this season, was created by Stonehouse. Flanked on either side are Kasius and Sinara, with the S.H.I.E.L.D. team and Deke in the center in front of the destroyed Earth of the future as well as Fitz reuniting with Simmons.[66]

text: Reception[edit]

text: Ratings[edit]

text:
No.
Title
Air date
Rating/share
(18–49)
Viewers
(millions)
DVR
(18–49)
DVR viewers
(millions)
Total
(18–49)
Total viewers
(millions)

1/2
"Orientation"
December 1, 2017
0.7/3
2.54[1]
0.6
1.72
1.3
4.27[67]

3
"A Life Spent"
December 8, 2017
0.5/2
1.93[2]
0.7
1.68
1.2
3.61[68]

4
"A Life Earned"
December 15, 2017
0.5/2
1.84[3]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

5
"Rewind"
December 22, 2017
0.6/3
2.40[4]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

6
"Fun & Games"
January 5, 2018
0.7/3
2.49[5]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

7
"Together or Not at All"
January 12, 2018
0.6/3
2.31[6]
0.7
1.75
1.3
4.07[69]

8
"The Last Day"
January 19, 2018
0.6/3
2.41[7]
0.8
1.82
1.4
4.23[70]

9
"Best Laid Plans"
January 26, 2018
0.6/3
2.27[8]
0.6
1.72
1.2
4.00[71]

10
"Past Life"
February 2, 2018
0.6/3
2.22[9]
0.6
1.74
1.2
3.96[72]

text: Critical response[edit]

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports a 100% approval rating, with an average rating of 7.67 out of 10, based on 9 reviews.[73]

text: Reviewing the premiere episodes, Merrill Barr of Forbes felt moving the series to space was not a reboot of the series, rather "a continuation, in some form, of the story set-up at the end of last season. The show is not different. The team is still trying to save the world. They're just doing it in a new place and new way. Overall, there's a lot to love about what S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing in the new season. It's a crazy ride fans are going to be glad they've stayed aboard for. The "Agents of Hydra" run [at the end of season four] was a bit weak. The space run is so far proving to be anything but."[74] Jon Negroni of We Got This Covered praised the show for its delightful twists and turns and for not relying on what's already worked, adding that "it's a testament to the show's ongoing experimentation that we can watch these characters get to space and believe that this is far from their final frontier." He felt, however, that there was "little room for pathos and seeds for character development" and that "we know almost nothing about where these individuals are at emotionally because of how fast we blazed through the finale."[75] Alex McLevy of The A.V. Club praised the move to space, saying that "if season four was Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. firing on all cylinders, especially during its stellar 'Agents of Hydra' arc in the Framework, then this is the look of a show that knows it has mastered its storytelling, and is confidently expanding the scope of its ambition."[76]

text: Accolades[edit]

text:
Year
Award
Category
Recipient
Result
Ref.

2018
TVLine's Performer of the Week
Performance in "The Last Day"
Ming-Na Wen
Nominated
[77]

Visual Effects Society Awards
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode
Mark Kolpack, Sabrina Arnold, David Rey, Kevin Yuille, Gary D'Amico for "Orientation, Part 1"
Nominated
[78]


document_title: Face perception

question_text: where does facial recognition occur in the brain

question_tokens: where does facial recognition occur in the brain

text: Face perception

text: Development[edit]

text: From birth, infants possess rudimentary facial processing capacities and show heightened interest in faces.[1][2] For example, newborns (1-3 days) have been shown to be able to recognize faces even when they are rotated up to 45 degrees.[3] However, interest in faces is not continuously present in infancy and shows increases and decreases over time as the child grows older. Specifically, while newborns show a preference for faces, this behavior is reduced between one- to four months of age.[4]Around three months of age, a preference for faces re-emerges and interest in faces seems to peak late during the first year but then declines again slowly over the next two years of life[5]. The re-emergence of a preference for faces at three months of age may be influenced by the child's own motor abilities and experiences.[6][7]  Infants as young as two days of age are capable of mimicking the facial expressions of an adult, displaying their capacity to note details like mouth and eye shape as well as to move their own muscles in a way that produces similar patterns in their faces.[8][9] However, despite this ability, newborns are not yet aware of the emotional content encoded within facial expressions. Five-month-olds, when presented with an image of a person making a fearful expression and a person making a happy expression, pay the same amount of attention to and exhibit similar event-related potentials (ERPs) for both. However, when seven-month-olds are given the same treatment, they focus more on the fearful face, and their event-related potential for the scared face shows a stronger initial negative central component than that for the happy face. This result indicates an increased attentional and cognitive focus toward fear that reflects the threat-salient nature of the emotion.[10] In addition, infants' negative central components were not different for new faces that varied in the intensity of an emotional expression but portrayed the same emotion as a face they had been habituated to but were stronger for different-emotion faces, showing that seven-month-olds regarded happy and sad faces as distinct emotive categories.[11]  While seven-month-olds have been found to focus more on fearful faces, another study by Jessen, Altvater-Mackensen, and Grossmann found that "happy expressions elicit enhanced sympathetic arousal in infants" both when facial expressions were presented subliminally and when they were presented supraliminally, or in a way that the infants were consciously aware of the stimulus.[12]  These results show that conscious awareness of a stimulus is not connected to an infant's reaction to that stimulus.[12]

text: The recognition of faces is an important neurological mechanism that individuals in society use every day. Jeffrey and Rhodes[13] write that faces "convey a wealth of information that we use to guide our social interactions".[14] Emotions play a large role in our social interactions. The perception of a positive or negative emotion on a face affects the way that an individual perceives and processes that face. For example, a face that is perceived to have a negative emotion is processed in a less holistic manner than a face displaying a positive emotion.[15]  The ability of face recognition is apparent even in early childhood. The neurological mechanisms responsible for face recognition are present by age five. Research shows that the way children process faces is similar to that of adults, but adults process faces more efficiently. The reason for this may be because of advancements in memory and cognitive functioning that occur with age.[14]

text: Infants are able to comprehend facial expressions as social cues representing the feelings of other people before they are a year old. At seven months, the object of an observed face's apparent emotional reaction is relevant in processing the face. Infants at this age show greater negative central components to angry faces that are looking directly at them than elsewhere, although the direction of fearful faces' gaze produces no difference. In addition, two ERP components in the posterior part of the brain are differently aroused by the two negative expressions tested. These results indicate that infants at this age can at least partially understand the higher level of threat from anger directed at them as compared to anger directed elsewhere.[16] By at least seven months of age, infants are also able to use facial expressions to understand others' behavior. Seven-month-olds will look to facial cues to understand the motives of other people in ambiguous situations, as shown by a study in which they watched an experimenter's face longer if she took a toy from them and maintained a neutral expression than if she made a happy expression.[17] Interest in the social world is increased by interaction with the physical environment. Training three-month-old infants to reach for objects with Velcro-covered "sticky mitts" increases the amount of attention that they pay to faces as compared to passively moving objects through their hands and non-trained control groups.[18]

text: In following with the notion that seven-month-olds have categorical understandings of emotion, they are also capable of associating emotional prosodies with corresponding facial expressions. When presented with a happy or angry face, shortly followed by an emotionally neutral word read in a happy or angry tone, their ERPs follow different patterns. Happy faces followed by angry vocal tones produce more changes than the other incongruous pairing, while there was no such difference between happy and angry congruous pairings, with the greater reaction implying that infants held greater expectations of a happy vocal tone after seeing a happy face than an angry tone following an angry face. Considering an infant's relative immobility and thus their decreased capacity to elicit negative reactions from their parents, this result implies that experience has a role in building comprehension of facial expressions.[19]

text: Several other studies indicate that early perceptual experience is crucial to the development of capacities characteristic of adult visual perception, including the ability to identify familiar people and to recognize and comprehend facial expressions.[20] The capacity to discern between faces, much like language, appears to have a broad potential in early life that is whittled down to kinds of faces that are experienced in early life.[20] Infants can discern between macaque faces at six months of age, but, without continued exposure, cannot at nine months of age. Being shown photographs of macaques during this three-month period gave nine-month-olds the ability to reliably distinguish between unfamiliar macaque faces.[21]

text: The neural substrates of face perception in infants are likely similar to those of adults, but the limits of imaging technology that are feasible for use with infants currently prevent very specific localization of function as well as specific information from subcortical areas[22] like the amygdala, which is active in the perception of facial expression in adults.[20] In a study on healthy adults, it was shown that faces are likely to be processed, in part, via a retinotectal (subcortical) pathway.[23]

text: However, there is activity near the fusiform gyrus,[22] as well as in occipital areas.[16] when infants are exposed to faces, and it varies depending on factors including facial expression and eye gaze direction.[11][16]

text: Adult[edit]

text: Recognizing and perceiving faces are vital abilities needed to coexist in society.  Faces can tell things such as identity, mood, age, sex, race, and the direction that someone is looking.[24][25][26] Studies based on neuropsychology, behavior, electrophysiology, and neuro-imaging have supported the notion of a specialized mechanism for perceiving faces.[26] Prosopagnosia patients demonstrate neuropsychological support for a specialized face perception mechanism as these people, due to brain damage, have deficits in facial perception, but their cognitive perception of objects remains intact. The face inversion effect provides behavioral support of a specialized mechanism as people tend to have greater deficits in task performance when prompted to react to an inverted face than to an inverted object.  Electrophysiological support comes from the finding that the N170 and M170 responses tend to be face-specific.  Neuro-imaging studies such as PET and fMRI studies have shown support for a specialized facial processing mechanism as they have identified regions of the fusiform gyrus that have higher activation during face perception tasks than other visual perception tasks.[26] Theories about the processes involved in adult face perception have largely come from two sources: research on normal adult face perception and the study of impairments in face perception that are caused by brain injury or neurological illness. Novel optical illusions such as the Flashed Face Distortion Effect, in which scientific phenomenology outpaces neurological theory, also provide areas for research.

text: One of the most widely accepted theories of face perception argues that understanding faces involves several stages:[27] from basic perceptual manipulations on the sensory information to derive details about the person (such as age, gender or attractiveness), to being able to recall meaningful details such as their name and any relevant past experiences of the individual.

text:
This model (developed by psychologists Vicki Bruce and Andrew Young) argues that face perception might involve several independent sub-processes working in unison.
A "view centered description" is derived from the perceptual input. Simple physical aspects of the face are used to work out age, gender or basic facial expressions. Most analysis at this stage is on feature-by-feature basis. That initial information is used to create a structural model of the face, which allows it to be compared to other faces in memory, and across views. After several exposures to a face this structural code allows us to recognize that face in different contexts.[28] This explains why the same person seen from a novel angle can still be recognized. This structural encoding can be seen to be specific for upright faces as demonstrated by the Thatcher effect. The structurally encoded representation is transferred to notional "face recognition units" that are used with "personal identity nodes" to identify a person through information from semantic memory. The natural ability to produce someone's name when presented with their face has been shown in experimental research to be damaged in some cases of brain injury, suggesting that naming may be a separate process from the memory of other information about a person.

text: The study of prosopagnosia (an impairment in recognizing faces which is usually caused by brain injury) has been particularly helpful in understanding how normal face perception might work. Individuals with prosopagnosia may differ in their abilities to understand faces, and it has been the investigation of these differences which has suggested that several stage theories might be correct.

text: Face perception is an ability that involves many areas of the brain; however, some areas have been shown to be particularly important. Brain imaging studies typically show a great deal of activity in an area of the temporal lobe known as the fusiform gyrus, an area also known to cause prosopagnosia when damaged (particularly when damage occurs on both sides). This evidence has led to a particular interest in this area and it is sometimes referred to as the fusiform face area (FFA) for that reason.[29]

text: Neuroanatomy of facial processing[edit]

text: There are several parts of the brain that play a role in face perception. Rossion, Hanseeuw, and Dricot[30] used BOLD fMRI mapping to identify activation in the brain when subjects viewed both cars and faces. The majority of BOLD fMRI studies use blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) contrast to determine which areas of the brain are activated by various cognitive functions.[31] They found that the occipital face area, located in the occipital lobe, the fusiform face area, the superior temporal sulcus, the amygdala, and the anterior/inferior cortex of the temporal lobe, all played roles in contrasting the faces from the cars, with the initial face perception beginning in the area and occipital face areas. This entire region links to form a network that acts to distinguish faces. The processing of faces in the brain is known as a "sum of parts" perception.[32] However, the individual parts of the face must be processed first in order to put all of the pieces together. In early processing, the occipital face area contributes to face perception by recognizing the eyes, nose, and mouth as individual pieces.[33] Furthermore, Arcurio, Gold, and James[34] used BOLD fMRI mapping to determine the patterns of activation in the brain when parts of the face were presented in combination and when they were presented singly. The occipital face area is activated by the visual perception of single features of the face, for example, the nose and mouth, and preferred combination of two-eyes over other combinations. This research supports that the occipital face area recognizes the parts of the face at the early stages of recognition. On the contrary, the fusiform face area shows no preference for single features, because the fusiform face area is responsible for "holistic/configural" information,[35] meaning that it puts all of the processed pieces of the face together in later processing. This theory is supported by the work of Gold et al.[32] who found that regardless of the orientation of a face, subjects were impacted by the configuration of the individual facial features. Subjects were also impacted by the coding of the relationships between those features. This shows that processing is done by a summation of the parts in the later stages of recognition.

text: Facial perception has well identified, neuroanatomical correlates in the brain. During the perception of faces, major activations occur in the extrastriate areas bilaterally, particularly in the fusiform face area, the occipital face area (OFA), and the superior temporal sulcus (fSTS).[36][37] Perceiving an inverted human face involves increased activity in the inferior temporal cortex, while perceiving a misaligned face involves increased activity in the occipital cortex.  However, none of these results were found when perceiving a dog face, suggesting that this process may be specific to perception of human faces.[38]

text: The fusiform face area is located in the lateral fusiform gyrus. It is thought that this area is involved in holistic processing of faces and it is sensitive to the presence of facial parts as well as the configuration of these parts. The fusiform face area is also necessary for successful face detection and identification. This is supported by fMRI activation and studies on prosopagnosia, which involves lesions in the fusiform face area.[36][37][39]

text: The OFA is located in the inferior occipital gyrus.[37] Similar to the FFA, this area is also active during successful face detection and identification, a finding that is supported by fMRI activation.[36] The OFA is involved and necessary in the analysis of facial parts but not in the spacing or configuration of facial parts. This suggests that the OFA may be involved in a facial processing step that occurs prior to the FFA processing.[36]

text: The fSTS is involved in recognition of facial parts and is not sensitive to the configuration of these parts. It is also thought that this area is involved in gaze perception.[40] The fSTS has demonstrated increased activation when attending to gaze direction.[36] Recent studies have tried to delineate whether fSTS area lights up while people use gaze of others in order to establish joint attention and not fSTS but another area (the gaze following patch which is still close to fSTS but not overlapping) was found to be the core of the gaze processing system in humans.[41]

text: Bilateral activation is generally shown in all of these specialized facial areas.[42][43][44][45][46][47] However, there are some studies that include increased activation in one side over the other. For instance McCarthy (1997) has shown that the right fusiform gyrus is more important for facial processing in complex situations.[39]

text: Gorno-Tempini and Price have shown that the fusiform gyri are preferentially responsive to faces, whereas the parahippocampal/lingual gyri are responsive to buildings.[48]

text: It is important to note that while certain areas respond selectively to faces, facial processing involves many neural networks. These networks include visual and emotional processing systems as well. Emotional face processing research has demonstrated that there are some of the other functions at work. While looking at faces displaying emotions (especially those with fear facial expressions) compared to neutral faces there is increased activity in the right fusiform gyrus. This increased activity also correlates with increased amygdala activity in the same situations.[49] The emotional processing effects observed in the fusiform gyrus are decreased in patients with amygdala lesions.[49] This demonstrates possible connections between the amygdala and facial processing areas.[49]

text: Another aspect that affects both the fusiform gyrus and the amygdala activation is the familiarity of faces. Having multiple regions that can be activated by similar face components indicates that facial processing is a complex process.[49] Platek and Kemp (2009) further showed increased brain activation in precuneus and cuneus when differentiation of two faces are easy (e.g., kin and familiar non-kin faces) and the role of posterior medial substrates for visual processing of faces with familiar features (e.g., faces that are averaged with the face of a sibling).[50]

text: Ishai and colleagues have proposed the object form topology hypothesis, which posits that there is a topological organization of neural substrates for object and facial processing.[51] However, Gauthier disagrees and suggests that the category-specific and process-map models could accommodate most other proposed models for the neural underpinnings of facial processing.[52]

text: Most neuroanatomical substrates for facial processing are perfused by the middle cerebral artery (MCA). Therefore, facial processing has been studied using measurements of mean cerebral blood flow velocity in the middle cerebral arteries bilaterally. During facial recognition tasks, greater changes in the right middle cerebral artery (RMCA) than the left (LMCA) have been observed.[53][54] It has been demonstrated that men were right lateralized and women left lateralized during facial processing tasks.[55]

text: Just as memory and cognitive function separate the abilities of children and adults to recognize faces, the familiarity of a face may also play a role in the perception of faces.[32] Zheng, Mondloch, and Segalowitz recorded event-related potentials in the brain to determine the timing of recognition of faces in the brain.[56] The results of the study showed that familiar faces are indicated and recognized by a stronger N250,[56] a specific wavelength response that plays a role in the visual memory of faces.[57] Similarly, Moulson et al.[58] found that all faces elicit the N170 response in the brain.

text: Using fMRI with single-unit electrophysiological recordings, Doris Tsao's group revealed[59] a code that brain uses to process faces in macaques. The brain conceptually needs only ~50 neurons to encode any human face, with facial features projected on individual axes (neurons) in a 50-dimensional "Face Space".

text: Hemispheric asymmetries in facial processing capability[edit]

text: The mechanisms underlying gender-related differences in facial processing have not been studied extensively.

text: Studies using electrophysiological techniques have demonstrated gender-related differences during a face recognition memory (FRM) task and a facial affect identification task (FAIT). The male subjects used a right, while the female subjects used a left, hemisphere neural activation system in the processing of faces and facial affect.[60] Moreover, in facial perception there was no association to estimated intelligence, suggesting that face recognition performance in women is unrelated to several basic cognitive processes.[61] Gender-related differences[62] may suggest a role for sex hormones. In females there may be variability for psychological functions[63] related to differences in hormonal levels during different phases of the menstrual cycle.[64]

text: Data obtained in norm and in pathology support asymmetric face processing.[65][66][67] Gorno-Tempini and others in 2001, suggested that the left inferior frontal cortex and the bilateral occipitotemporal junction respond equally to all face conditions. Some neuroscientists contend that both the left inferior frontal cortex (Brodmann area 47) and the occipitotemporal junction are implicated in facial memory.[68][69][70] The right inferior temporal/fusiform gyrus responds selectively to faces but not to non-faces. The right temporal pole is activated during the discrimination of familiar faces and scenes from unfamiliar ones.[71] Right asymmetry in the mid temporal lobe for faces has also been shown using 133-Xenon measured cerebral blood flow (CBF).[72] Other investigators have observed right lateralization for facial recognition in previous electrophysiological and imaging studies.[73]

text: The implication of the observation of asymmetry for facial perception would be that different hemispheric strategies would be implemented. The right hemisphere would be expected to employ a holistic strategy, and the left an analytic strategy.[74][75][76][77] In 2007, Philip Njemanze, using a novel functional transcranial Doppler (fTCD) technique called functional transcranial Doppler spectroscopy (fTCDS), demonstrated that men were right lateralized for object and facial perception, while women were left lateralized for facial tasks but showed a right tendency or no lateralization for object perception.[78] Njemanze demonstrated using fTCDS, summation of responses related to facial stimulus complexity, which could be presumed as evidence for topological organization of these cortical areas in men. It may suggest that the latter extends from the area implicated in object perception to a much greater area involved in facial perception.

text: This agrees with the object form topology hypothesis proposed by Ishai and colleagues in 1999. However, the relatedness of object and facial perception was process-based, and appears to be associated with their common holistic processing strategy in the right hemisphere. Moreover, when the same men were presented with facial paradigm requiring analytic processing, the left hemisphere was activated. This agrees with the suggestion made by Gauthier in 2000, that the extrastriate cortex contains areas that are best suited for different computations, and described as the process-map model. Therefore, the proposed models are not mutually exclusive, and this underscores the fact that facial processing does not impose any new constraints on the brain other than those used for other stimuli.

text: It may be suggested that each stimulus was mapped by category into face or non-face, and by process into holistic or analytic. Therefore, a unified category-specific process-mapping system was implemented for either right or left cognitive styles. Njemanze in 2007, concluded that, for facial perception, men used a category-specific process-mapping system for right cognitive style, but women used same for the left.

text: Cognitive neuroscience[edit]

text: Cognitive neuroscientists Isabel Gauthier and Michael Tarr are two of the major proponents of the view that face recognition involves expert discrimination of similar objects (See the Perceptual Expertise Network). Other scientists, in particular Nancy Kanwisher and her colleagues, argue that face recognition involves processes that are face-specific and that are not recruited by expert discriminations in other object classes (see the domain specificity).

text: Studies by Gauthier have shown that an area of the brain known as the fusiform gyrus (sometimes called the fusiform face area because it is active during face recognition) is also active when study participants are asked to discriminate between different types of birds and cars,[79] and even when participants become expert at distinguishing computer generated nonsense shapes known as greebles.[80] This suggests that the fusiform gyrus may have a general role in the recognition of similar visual objects. Yaoda Xu, then a post doctoral fellow with Nancy Kanwisher, replicated the car and bird expertise study using an improved fMRI design that was less susceptible to attentional accounts.

text: The activity found by Gauthier when participants viewed non-face objects was not as strong as when participants were viewing faces, however this could be because we have much more expertise for faces than for most other objects. Furthermore, not all findings of this research have been successfully replicated, for example, other research groups using different study designs have found that the fusiform gyrus is specific to faces and other nearby regions deal with non-face objects.[81]

text: However, these failures to replicate are difficult to interpret, because studies vary on too many aspects of the method. It has been argued that some studies test experts with objects that are slightly outside of their domain of expertise. More to the point, failures to replicate are null effects and can occur for many different reasons. In contrast, each replication adds a great deal of weight to a particular argument. With regard to "face specific" effects in neuroimaging, there are now multiple replications with Greebles, with birds and cars,[82] and two unpublished studies with chess experts.[83][84]

text: Although it is sometimes found that expertise recruits the FFA (e.g. as hypothesized by a proponent of this view in the preceding paragraph), a more common and less controversial finding is that expertise leads to focal category-selectivity in the fusiform gyrus—a pattern similar in terms of antecedent factors and neural specificity to that seen for faces. As such, it remains an open question as to whether face recognition and expert-level object recognition recruit similar neural mechanisms across different subregions of the fusiform or whether the two domains literally share the same neural substrates. Moreover, at least one study argues that the issue as to whether expertise-predicated category-selective areas overlap with the FFA is nonsensical in that multiple measurements of the FFA within an individual person often overlap no more with each other than do measurements of FFA and expertise-predicated regions.[85] At the same time, numerous studies have failed to replicate them altogether.[citation needed] For example, four published fMRI studies have asked whether expertise has any specific connection to the FFA in particular, by testing for expertise effects in both the FFA and a nearby but not face-selective region called LOC (Rhodes et al., JOCN 2004; Op de Beeck et al., JN 2006; Moore et al., JN 2006; Yue et al. VR 2006). In all four studies, expertise effects are significantly stronger in the LOC than in the FFA, and indeed expertise effects were only borderline significant in the FFA in two of the studies, while the effects were robust and significant in the LOC in all four studies.[citation needed]

text: Therefore, it is still not clear in exactly which situations the fusiform gyrus becomes active, although it is certain that face recognition relies heavily on this area and damage to it can lead to severe face recognition impairment.

text: Self-face perception[edit]

text: Studies regarding face perception have also looked specifically at self-face perception.  One study found that the perception/recognition of one's own face was unaffected by changing contexts, while the perception/recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces was adversely affected.[86] Another study that focused on older adults found that they had self-face advantage in configural processing but not featural processing.[87]

text: Face advantage in memory recall[edit]

text: During face perception, neural networks make connections with the brain to recall memories.[88] According to the Seminal Model of face perception, there are three stages of face processing including recognition of the face, the recall of memories and information that are linked with that face, and finally name recall.[27][88] There are, however, exceptions to this order. For example, names are recalled faster than semantic information in cases of highly familiar stimuli.[89] While the face is powerful identifier of individuals, the voice also helps in the recognition of people and is an identifier for important information.[90][91]

text: Research has been conducted to see if faces or voices make it easier to identify individuals and recall semantic memory and episodic memory.[92] These experiments look at all three stages of face processing. The experiment method was to show two groups celebrity and familiar faces or voices with a between-group design and ask the participants to recall information about them.[92] The participants are first asked if the stimulus is familiar. If they answer yes then they are asked to information (semantic memory) and memories they have of the person (episodic memory) that fits the face or voice presented. These experiments all demonstrate the strong phenomenon of the face advantage and how it persists through different follow-up studies with different experimental controls and variables.[92]

text: Recognition-performance issue[edit]

text: After the first experiments on the advantage of faces over voices in memory recall, errors and gaps were found in the methods used.[92] For one, there was not a clear face advantage for the recognition stage of face processing. Participants showed a familiarity-only response to voices more often than faces.[93] In other words, when voices were recognized (about 60-70% of the time) they were much harder to recall biographical information but very good at being recognized.[92] The results were looked at as remember versus know judgements. A lot more remember results (or familiarity) occurred with voices, and more know (or memory recall) responses happened with faces.[91] This phenomenon persists through experiments dealing with criminal line-ups in prisons. Witnesses are more likely to say that a suspect's voice sounded familiar than his/her face even though they cannot remember anything about the suspect.[94] This discrepancy is due to a larger amount of guesswork and false alarms that occur with voices.[91]

text: To give faces a similar ambiguity to that of voices, the face stimuli were blurred in the follow-up experiment[93]  This experiment followed the same procedures as the first, presenting two groups with sets of stimuli made up of half celebrity faces and half unfamiliar faces.[92] The only difference was that the face stimuli were blurred so that detailed features could not be seen.  Participants were then asked to say if they recognized the person, if they could recall specific biographical information about them, and finally if they knew the person's name. The results were completely different from those of the original experiment, supporting the view that there were problems in the first experiment's methods.[92] According to the results of the followup, the same amount of information and memory could be recalled through voices and faces, dismantling the face advantage. However, these results are flawed and premature because other methodological issues in the experiment still needed to be fixed.[92]

text: Content of speech[edit]

text: The process of controlling the content of speech extract has proven to be more difficult than the elimination of non facial cues in photographs.[92]  Thus the findings of experiments that did not control this factor lead to misleading conclusions regarding the voice recognition over the face recognition.[92]  For example, in an experiment it was found that 40% of the time participants could easily pair the celebrity-voice with their occupation just by guessing.[93] In order to eliminate these errors, experimenters removed parts of the voice samples that could possibly give clues to the identity of the target, such as catchphrases.[95]   Even after controlling the voice samples as well as the face samples (using blurred faces), studies have shown that semantic information can be more accessible to retrieve when individuals are recognizing faces than voices.[96]

text: Another technique to control the content of the speech extracts is to present the faces and voices of personally familiar individuals, like the participant's teachers or neighbors, instead of the faces and voices of celebrities.[92]  In this way alike words are used for the speech extracts.[92]  For example, the familiar targets are asked to read exactly the same scripted speech for their voice extracts. The results showed again that semantic information is easier to retrieve when individuals are recognizing faces than voices.[92]

text: Frequency-of-exposure issue[edit]

text: Another factor that has to be controlled in order for the results to be reliable is the frequency of exposure.[92]  If we take the example of celebrities, people are exposed to celebrities' faces more often than their voices because of the mass media.[92]  Through magazines, newspapers and the Internet, individuals are exposed to celebrities' faces without their voices on an everyday basis rather than their voices without their faces.[92] Thus, someone could argue that for all of the experiments that were done until now the findings were a result of the frequency of exposure to the faces of celebrities rather than their voices.[97]

text: To overcome this problem researchers decided to use personally familiar individuals as stimuli instead of celebrities.[92]  Personally familiar individuals, such as participant's teachers, are for the most part heard as well as seen.[98]  Studies that used this type of control also demonstrated the face advantage.[98]  Students were able to retrieve semantic information more readily when recognizing their teachers faces (both normal and blurred)rather their voices.[96]

text: However, researchers over the years have found an even more effective way to control not only the frequency of exposure but also the content of the speech extracts, the associative learning paradigm.[92]  Participants are asked to link semantic information as well as names with pre-experimentally unknown voices and faces.[99][100]  In a current experiment that used this paradigm, a name and a profession were given together with, accordingly, a voice, a face or both to three participant groups.[99]  The associations described above were repeated four times.[99]  The next step was a cued recall task in which every stimulus that was learned in the previous phase was introduced and participants were asked to tell the profession and the name for every stimulus.[99][101]  Again, the results showed that semantic information can be more accessible to retrieve when individuals are recognizing faces than voices even when the frequency of exposure was controlled.[92][99]

text: Extension to episodic memory and explanation for existence[edit]

text: Episodic memory is our ability to remember specific, previously experienced events.[102] In recognition of faces as it pertains to episodic memory, there has been shown to be activation in the left lateral prefrontal cortex, parietal lobe, and the left medial frontal/anterior cingulate cortex.[103][104] It was also found that a left lateralization during episodic memory retrieval in the parietal cortex correlated strongly with success in retrieval.[103] This may possibly be due to the hypothesis that the link between face recognition and episodic memory were stronger than those of voice and episodic memory.[93] This hypothesis can also be supported by the existence of specialized face recognition devices thought to be located in the temporal lobes.[103][105] There is also evidence of the existence of two separate neural systems for face recognition: one for familiar faces and another for newly learned faces.[103] One explanation for this link between face recognition and episodic memory is that since face recognition is a major part of human existence, the brain creates a link between the two in order to be better able to communicate with others.[106]

text: Ethnicity[edit]

text: Differences in own- versus other-race face recognition and perceptual discrimination was first researched in 1914.[107] Humans tend to perceive people of other races than their own to all look alike:

text: Other things being equal, individuals of a given race are distinguishable from each other in proportion to our familiarity, to our contact with the race as whole. Thus, to the uninitiated American all Asiatics look alike, while to the Asiatics, all White men look alike.[107]

text: This phenomenon is known mainly as the cross-race effect, but is also called the own-race effect, other-race effect, own race bias or interracial-face-recognition-deficit.[108]

text: In 1990, Mullen reported finding evidence that the other-race effect is larger among White subjects than among African American subjects, whereas Brigham and Williamson (1979, cited in Shepherd, 1981) obtained the opposite pattern.[109] However, it should be noted that it is difficult to measure the true influence of the cross-race effect. D. Stephen Lindsay and colleagues note that results in these studies could be due to intrinsic difficulty in recognizing the faces presented, an actual difference in the size of cross-race effect between the two test groups, or some combination of these two factors.[109] Shepherd reviewed studies that found better performance on both African American[110] and White faces,[111] and yet Shepherd also reviewed other studies in which no difference was found.[112] Overall, Shepherd reported a reliable positive correlation between the size of the effect and the amount of interaction subjects had with members of the other race. This correlation reflects the fact that African American subjects, who performed equally well on faces of both races in Shepherd's study, almost always responded with the highest possible self-rating of amount of interaction with white people (M = 4.75; 5 being the most interaction with people of that race, 1 being the least), whereas their white counterparts both displayed a larger other-race effect and reported less other-race interaction (M = 2.13). This difference in rating was found statistically reliable, £(30) = 7.86, p < .01.[109]

text: The cross-race effect seems to appear in humans around 6 months of age.[113] Cross-race effects can be changed from early childhood through adulthood through interaction with people of other races.[114] Other-race experience in own- versus other-race face processing is a major influence on the cross-race effect (O'Toole et al., 1991; Slone et al., 2000; Walker & Tanaka, 2003). In a series of studies, Walker and colleagues revealed that participants with greater other-race experience were consistently more accurate at discriminating between other-race faces than were participants with less other-race experience (Walker & Tanaka, 2003; Walker & Hewstone, 2006a,b; 2007). Many current models of the cross-race effect assume that holistic face processing mechanisms are more fully engaged when viewing own-race faces compared to other-race faces.[115]

text: The own-race effect appears to be related to increased ability to extract information about the spatial relationships between different facial features.[116] Daniel T. Levin writes that a deficit occurs when viewing people of another race because visual information specifying race takes up mental attention at the expense of individuating information when recognizing faces of other races.[117] Further research using perceptual tasks could shed light on the specific cognitive processes involved in the other-race effect.[109] Bernstein et al. (2007) demonstrate that the own-race effect likely extends beyond racial membership into in-group versus out-group concepts. It was shown that categorizing somebody by the university he or she attends results in similar results compared to studies about the own-race effect.[118] Hugenberg, Miller, and Claypool (2007) shed light on overcoming the own-race effect. They performed a study in which they introduced people to the concept of the own-race effect before presenting them faces and found that if people were made aware of the own-race effect prior to the experiment, the test subjects showed significantly less if any own-race effect.[119]

text: Studies on adults have also shown sex differences in face recognition. Men tend to recognize fewer faces of women than women do, whereas there are no sex differences with regard to male faces.[120]

text: In individuals with autism spectrum disorder[edit]

text: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a comprehensive neural developmental disorder that produces many deficits including social, communicative,[121] and perceptual deficits.[122] Of specific interest, individuals with autism exhibit difficulties in various aspects of facial perception, including facial identity recognition and recognition of emotional expressions.[123][124] These deficits are suspected to be a product of abnormalities occurring in both the early and late stages of facial processing.[125]

text: Speed and methods[edit]

text: People with ASD process face and non-face stimuli with the same speed.[125][126] In typically developing individuals, there is a preference for face processing, thus resulting in a faster processing speed in comparison to non-face stimuli.[125][126] These individuals primarily utilize holistic processing when perceiving faces.[122] Contrastingly, individuals with ASD employ part-based processing or bottom-up processing, focusing on individual features rather than the face as a whole.[127][128] When focusing on the individual parts of the face, persons with ASD direct their gaze primarily to the lower half of the face, specifically the mouth, varying from the eye trained gaze of typically developing people.[127][128][129][130][131]  This deviation from holistic face processing does not employ the use of facial prototypes, which are templates stored in memory that make for easy retrieval.[124][132]

text: Additionally, individuals with ASD display difficulty with recognition memory, specifically memory that aids in identifying faces. The memory deficit is selective for faces and does not extend to other objects or visual inputs.[124] Some evidence lends support to the theory that these face-memory deficits are products of interference between connections of face processing regions.[124]

text: Associated difficulties[edit]

text: The atypical facial processing style of people with ASD often manifests in constrained social ability, due to decreased eye contact, joint attention, interpretation of emotional expression, and communicative skills.[133] These deficiencies can be seen in infants as young as 9 months; specifically in terms of poor eye contact and difficulties engaging in joint attention.[125]  Some experts have even used the term 'face avoidance' to describe the phenomena where infants who are later diagnosed with ASD preferentially attend to non-face objects over faces.[121] Furthermore, some have proposed that the demonstrated impairment in children with ASD's ability to grasp emotional content of faces is not a reflection of the incapacity to process emotional information, but rather, the result of a general inattentiveness to facial expression.[121] The constraints of these processes that are essential to the development of communicative and social-cognitive abilities are viewed to be the cause of impaired social engagement and responsivity.[134] Furthermore, research suggests that there exists a link between decreased face processing abilities in individuals with ASD and later deficits in Theory of Mind; for example, while typically developing individuals are able to relate others' emotional expressions to their actions, individuals with ASD do not demonstrate this skill to the same extent.[135]

text: There is some contention about this causation however, resembling the chicken or the egg dispute. Others theorize that social impairment leads to perceptual problems rather than vice versa.[127] In this perspective, a biological lack of social interest inherent to ASD inhibits developments of facial recognition and perception processes due to underutilization.[127] Continued research is necessary to determine which theory is best supported.

text: Neurology[edit]

text: Many of the obstacles that individuals with ASD face in terms of facial processing may be derived from abnormalities in the fusiform face area and amygdala, which have been shown to be important in face perception as discussed above. Typically, the fusiform face area in individuals with ASD has reduced volume compared to normally developed persons.[136] This volume reduction has been attributed to deviant amygdala activity that does not flag faces as emotionally salient and thus decreases activation levels of the fusiform face area. This hypoactivity in the fusiform face area has been found in several studies.[127]

text: Studies are not conclusive as to which brain areas people with ASD use instead. One study found that, when looking at faces, people with ASD exhibit activity in brain regions normally active when typically developing individuals perceive objects.[127] Another study found that during facial perception, people with ASD use different neural systems, with each one of them using their own unique neural circuitry.[136]

text: Compensation mechanisms[edit]

text: As ASD individuals age, scores on behavioral tests assessing ability to perform face-emotion recognition increase to levels similar to controls.[125][137] Yet, it is apparent that the recognition mechanisms of these individuals are still atypical, though often effective.[137] In terms of face identity-recognition, compensation can take many forms including a more pattern-based strategy which was first seen in face inversion tasks.[130] Alternatively, evidence suggests that older individuals compensate by using mimicry of other's facial expressions and rely on their motor feedback of facial muscles for face emotion-recognition.[138] These strategies help overcome the obstacles individuals with ASD face in interacting within social contexts.

text: In individuals with schizophrenia[edit]

text: Attention, perception, memory, learning, processing, reasoning, and problem solving are known to be affected in individuals with schizophrenia.[139] Schizophrenia has been linked to impaired face and emotion perception.[139][3][140][86] People with schizophrenia demonstrate worse accuracy and slower response time in face perception tasks in which they are asked to match faces, remember faces, and recognize which emotions are present in a face.[86] People with schizophrenia have more difficulty matching upright faces than they do with inverted faces.[139] A reduction in configural processing, using the distance between features of an item for recognition or identification (e.g. features on a face such as eyes or nose), has also been linked to schizophrenia.[86] Schizophrenia patients are able to easily identify a "happy" affect but struggle to identify faces as "sad" or "fearful".[140] Impairments in face and emotion perception are linked to impairments in social skills, due to the individual's inability to distinguish facial emotions.[140][86]People with schizophrenia tend to demonstrate a reduced N170 response, atypical face scanning patterns, and a configural processing dysfunction.[141] The severity of schizophrenia symptoms has been found to correlate with the severity of impairment in face perception.[86]

text: Individuals with diagnosed schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder have been found to have even more impairment in face and emotion perception than individuals with just schizophrenia. These individuals struggle to identify anger, surprise, and disgust. There is a link between aggression and emotion perception difficulties for people with this dual diagnosis.[140]

text: Data from magnetic resonance imaging and functional magnetic resonance imaging has shown that a smaller volume of the fusiform gyrus is linked to greater impairments in face perception.[3]

text: There is a positive correlation between self-face recognition and other-face recognition difficulties in individuals with schizophrenia.  The degree of schizotypy has also been shown to correlate with self-face difficulties, unusual perception difficulties, and other face recognition difficulties.[142] Schizophrenia patients report more feelings of strangeness when looking in a mirror than do normal controls. Hallucinations, somatic concerns, and depression have all been found to be associated with self-face perception difficulties.[143]

text: In animals[edit]

text: Neurobiologist Jenny Morton and her team have been able to teach sheep to choose a familiar face over unfamiliar one when presented with two photographs, which has led to the discovery that sheep can recognise human faces.[144][145] Archerfish (distant relatives of humans) were able to differentiate between forty-four different human faces, which supports the theory that there is no need for a neocortex or a history of discerning human faces in order to do so.[146] Pigeons were found to use the same parts of the brain as humans do to distinguish between happy and neutral faces or male and female faces.[146]

text: Artificial[edit]

text: A great deal of effort has been put into developing software that can recognize human faces. Much of the work has been done by a branch of artificial intelligence known as computer vision which uses findings from the psychology of face perception to inform software design. Recent breakthroughs using noninvasive functional transcranial Doppler spectroscopy as demonstrated by Njemanze, 2007, to locate specific responses to facial stimuli have led to improved systems for facial recognition. The new system uses input responses called cortical long-term potentiation (CLTP) derived from Fourier analysis of mean blood flow velocity to trigger target face search from a computerized face database system.[147][148] Such a system provides for brain-machine interface for facial recognition, and the method has been referred to as cognitive biometrics.

text: Another application is the estimation of human age from face images. As an important hint for human communication, facial images contain lots of useful information including gender, expression, age, etc. Unfortunately, compared with other cognition problems, age estimation from facial images is still very challenging. This is mainly because the aging process is influenced not only by a person's genes but also many external factors. Physical condition, living style etc. may accelerate or slow the aging process. Besides, since the aging process is slow and with long duration, collecting sufficient data for training is fairly demanding work.[149]

text: Genetic basis[edit]

text: While it has been widely recognized that many cognitive abilities, such as general intelligence, have genetic bases, evidence for the genetic basis of facial recognition abilities specifically is fairly recent. Some of the earliest published research on the relationship between facial recognition and genetics focused on the genetic bases of facial recognition in the context of genetic disorders which impair facial recognition abilities, such as Turner syndrome. In a study by Lawrence, K. et al. in 2003[87] the authors found significantly poorer facial recognition abilities in individuals with Turner syndrome, a genetic disorder which results in impaired amygdala functioning, suggesting that amygdala functioning may impact face perception.[87] Evidence for the genetic basis of facial recognition abilities in the general population, however, comes from studies on face perception in twin participants by Wilmer, J. B. et al. in 2009,[150] in which the facial recognition scores on the Cambridge Face Memory test were twice as similar for monozygotic twins in comparison to dizygotic twins.[150] This finding was supported by a twin study on the genetic bases of facial recognition by Zhu, Q. et al. in (2009) which found a similar difference in facial recognition scores when comparing monozygotic and dizygotic twins[151] and Shakeshaft, N. G. & Plomin, R. (2015),[152] which determined the heritability of facial recognition to be approximately 61%, using a similar set of twin studies.[152] There was also no significant relationship identified between facial recognition scores and measures of any other cognitive abilities,[150] most notably the lack of a correlation with general object recognition abilities. This suggests that facial recognition abilities are not only heritable, but that their genetic basis is independent from the bases of other cognitive abilities and are specialized for face perception.[150] Research by Cattaneo, Z. et al. (2016)[153] and suggest that the more extreme examples of facial recognition abilities, specifically hereditary prosopagnosics, are also highly genetically correlated.[153] For hereditary prosopagnosics, an autosomal dominant model of inheritance has been proposed by Kennerknecht, I. et al. (2006).[154] Research by Cattaneo, Z. et al. (2016)[153] also correlated the probability of hereditary prosopagnosia with the presence of single nucleotide polymorphisms[153] along the Oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR), specifically at nucleotides rs2254298 and rs53576 on OXTR intron three,[153] suggesting that these alleles may serve a critical role in normal face perception. Mutation from the wild type allele at these loci has also been found to result in other disorders in which social and facial recognition deficits are common,[153] such as autism spectrum disorder, which may imply that the genetic bases for general facial recognition are complex and polygenic.[153] This relationship between the OXTR gene and facial recognition abilities is also supported by studies of individuals who do not suffer from hereditary prosopagnosia by Melchers, M. et al. (2013)[155] and Westberg, L. et al. (2016)[156] which correlated general facial recognition abilities with different polymorphisms of the OXTR gene, specifically rs7632287[156] and rs2268498.[155] Further research is needed to confirm the specific mechanisms of these genetic components on face perception; however, current evidence does suggest that facial recognition abilities are highly linked to genetic, rather than environmental, bases.