Are you good at picking someone out of a crowd?

Most of us are better at recognising faces than distinguishing between other similar objects, so it’s long been suspected there’s something mysterious about the way the brain processes a face. Now further evidence has emerged that this is a special, highly evolved skill. A study of twins suggests there are genes influencing face recognition abilities that are distinct from the ones affecting intelligence – so it’s not that people who are good with faces just have a better memory, for instance.
 “The idea is that telling friend from foe was so important to survival that there was very strong pressure to improve that trait,” says Nicholas Shakeshaft of King’s College London. Previous studies using brain scanning have suggested there is a part of the brain dedicated to recognising faces, called the fusiform face area. But others have suggested this region may in fact just be used for discriminating between any familiar objects. Wondering if genetics could shed any light, Shakeshaft’s team tested more than 900 sets of UK twins – including both identical and non-identical pairs – on their face recognition skills. The ability turned out to be highly heritable, with identical twins having more similar abilities than fraternal ones. The same went for intelligence, which had earlier been tested as part of a long-running study. However, there was little relationship between face recognition abilities and intelligence: in other words you could be clever but bad with faces, or vice versa. Comparing individuals against their twin suggested that only 10 per cent of the heritability of face recognition was down to genes that also influenced intelligence. “That’s consistent with the idea that there are genes that drive the development of a specific brain region,” says Shakeshaft. Ashok Jansari of Goldsmiths, University of London, says looking at the genetics of face recognition is a useful alternative approach to brain scans. “It’s completely different,” he says. “But it goes along with the idea that face processing is a very special ability.”
You can test your own face recognition skills here.
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