Can YOU name these 10 upside-down celebrity faces? New study provides clues about why the ‘inversion effect’ is so difficult for our brains

When you get to know someone you start to recognize their face quite quickly, but when you see them upside down, studies show it’s harder to say.

Known as the face inversion effect (FIE), scientists have been trying to find out for a long time whether this is evolutionary or learned behavior.

“Face processing has received a lot of research attention and it is a relatively well-developed area of ​​research, but the brain is complicated and difficult to study, so we still have only a vague understanding of how face processing works,” said Brad Duchaine, a psychologist at Dartmouth. College at DailyMail.com.

Now a study by Duchaine’s team offers a unique opportunity to study how we perceive faces. They studied a Brazilian man named Claudio Vieira de Oliveira, who has a congenital joint disorder that causes his head to rotate 180 degrees.

SCROLL DOWN TO TAKE OUR UPDOWN CELEB QUIZ. THE ANSWERS ARE AT THE BOTTOM.

Claudio Vieira de Oliveira lives with atrophied legs, his arms stuck to his chest and his head turned back, supported by his back. At birth he was only given 24 hours to live

Due to the position of his head, Vieira de Oliveira usually sees people’s faces upside down. Researchers tested its recognition abilities in 2015 and 2019.

The researchers showed Vieira de Oliveira upright and inverted faces and wanted to study his detection and identity matching abilities.

Upright faces were faces with eyes above the mouth, and inverted faces were faces with eyes below the mouth, the study said.

Researchers found that if Vieira de Oliveira were to identify upright faces better than inverted faces, this would mean that the recognition would be more based on experience, as this is how he usually perceives people.

Vieira de Oliveira performed similarly on upright and inverted faces, indicating that both evolution and experience influence our ability to perceive faces.

When Vieira de Oliveira showed upright faces, she was accurate 61 percent of the time. When shown inverted faces, he was accurate 68 percent of the time.

Vieira de Oliveira was born with arthrogryposis multiplex congenitaa condition that limits the range of motion of multiple joints and causes muscle weakness, and his parents were told he would not survive birth.

He lives in the small town of Monte Santo in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. He has been walking on his knees since he was seven and learned to read and write from his mother

However, Vieira de Oliveira currently works as a tax accountant and has given motivational speeches and written an autobiography.

“Before this study, nothing was known about how someone who has seen many faces that don’t match their own performs with upright and inverted faces,” Duchaine said.

“These results indicate that people with typical face perception are extremely good at upright faces, both because of the experience they have had with them and because their visual systems have processes designed to process upright faces,” he said.

They also showed Vieira de Oliveira ‘Red’ facesor faces where certain features, such as the mouth and eyes, are inverted on an upright face, or held upright on an inverted face.

Looking at the ‘Thatcherized’ faces, Vieira de Oliveira performed better when seeing upright faces with altered facial features.

Researchers said they don’t understand why Vieira de Oliveira recognized the Thatcherized faces correctly, but assume it has to do with a different visual mechanism than detecting faces and identities.

“Almost everyone has much more experience with upright faces and ancestors whose reproduction was influenced by their ability to process upright faces, so it is not easy to predict the influence of experience and evolved mechanisms tailored to upright faces in typical participants,” Duchaine said. in a press release.

The researchers want to continue learning about the differences between how evolution and experience play a role in the way people perceive faces.

They also want to study the different judgments people make when they see faces, such as how they perceive attractiveness and trustworthiness.

Look below to see how well you recognize some celebrities whose images have been reversed.

1) Do you recognize this Grammy Award-winning artist? 2) What about this sports star?

3) Can you tell who this Scottish actor is? 4) Do you know who this film producer is?

5) Do you know who this former Los Angeles Laker is? 6) Which award-winning Hollywood actor is this?

7) Do you recognize this real princess? 8) Do you know which young Hollywood star this is?

9) Do you recognize this iconic singer? 10) What about this singer-turned-actress?

Answers: Beyoncé, Tom Brady, Gerard Butler, George Lucas, Shaquille O’Neal, Bradley Cooper, Catherine Middleton, Princess of Wales, Zendaya, Rihanna, Lady Gaga