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Thread: Fetuses can recognize faces

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    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Fetuses can recognize faces

    Developing fetuses react to face-like shapes from the womb - Phys.org
    Babies look for faces as soon as they are born, and now it seems they can do this while still a fetus inside the uterus.
    The team tested both patterns on 39 healthy fetuses during the final third of pregnancy, five times each. Out of 195 tests of each configuration, fetuses turned to follow the “face” shape 40 times, and the inverted image only 14 times. “It’s definitely a robust finding. What matters is the difference between the conditions,” says Reid.
    I didn't know this...I'm impressed.
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    Spear Dog's Avatar Primicerius
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    The foetuses tested were at 34 weeks, this is very close to the 35-36 pre-term baby threshold were newborns can be breast fed and have a high chance (near the same as a full term) of survival. They are smaller and thinner but that may very well inspire in a mother closer attention to feeding and care, increasing the babies chances of survival. The ability to react and respond to the care giver is part of a bonding process that also (generally) increases the odds of survival for a new born. It makes sense that this vital function for a social being develops early as there are no guarantees a foetus will reach full term and bonding to the care giver has a much more critical outcome for a pre-term baby.






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    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by Spear Dog View Post
    The foetuses tested were at 34 weeks, this is very close to the 35-36 pre-term baby threshold were newborns can be breast fed and have a high chance (near the same as a full term) of survival. They are smaller and thinner but that may very well inspire in a mother closer attention to feeding and care, increasing the babies chances of survival. The ability to react and respond to the care giver is part of a bonding process that also (generally) increases the odds of survival for a new born. It makes sense that this vital function for a social being develops early as there are no guarantees a foetus will reach full term and bonding to the care giver has a much more critical outcome for a pre-term baby.
    Yes, but that's not the point. We're talking about their face recognition skills before birth. How do they do it? amazing, isn't it? I asked this question to a pediatrician, and he doesn't have a clear answer.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
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    Spear Dog's Avatar Primicerius
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Face to face contact is an important interaction in interpersonal relationships, a baby does it instinctively to enhance bonding of the care giver. We're not really talking about facial recognition but a response where the baby turns it's face towards a stimuli that is face-shaped:

    "We have shown the fetus can distinguish between different shapes, preferring to track face-like over non-face-like shapes," says Vincent Reid of Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. "This preference has been recognized in babies for many decades, but until now exploring fetal vision has not been attempted." (OP linked article)

    The benefit is that the care-givers, i.e; mother and/or father, respond to this reaction favourably and emotional bonding is reinforced. The baby is not really recognising anything, but responding instinctively to an inherent stimuli. What is amazing is that this behaviour in foetuses indicates that at least some aspects of social interactivity are genetically coded, a position that contradicts the central tenets of some schools of psychological thought (i.e; that all behaviour is learnt). Given that the family and the interpersonal bonds within that basic grouping are proposed as the fundamental of all social form, one could expansively suggest that human society is a genetic trait.

    Can of worms territroy.
    Last edited by Spear Dog; June 09, 2017 at 06:59 AM.






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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    To be fair being repeteadly told so many times that fetusus are understimated in their life signals, this isn't that surprising.
    What will be interesting is the political and social responses to this.
    Some would go as far as claiming the fetus was not even alive before birth.
    Last edited by fkizz; June 09, 2017 at 08:17 PM.
    It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.

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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Relevant:

    The fusiform face area (FFA) is a part of the human visual system that, it is speculated, is specialized for facial recognition. It is located in the fusiform gyrus (Brodmann area 37)...

    The human FFA was first described by Justine Sergent in 1992[1] and later named by Nancy Kanwisher in 1997[2] who proposed that the existence of the FFA is evidence for domain specificity in the visual system. Studies have recently shown that the FFA is composed of functional clusters that are at a finer spatial scale than prior investigations have measured.[3] Electrical stimulation of these functional clusters selectively distorts face perception, which is causal support for the role of these functional clusters in perceiving the facial image.[4] While it is generally agreed that the FFA responds more to faces than to most other categories, there is debate about whether the FFA is uniquely dedicated to face processing, as proposed by Nancy Kanwisher and others, or whether it participates in the processing of other objects...

    One case study of agnosia provided evidence that faces are processed in a special way. A patient known as C. K., who suffered brain damage as a result of a car accident, later developed object agnosia. He experienced great difficulty with basic-level object recognition, also extending to body parts, but performed very well at recognizing faces.[13]
    Fusiform face area

    The evidence is stronger than what is implied by the use of the word "speculated" in the Wiki article.
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


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    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Indeed. I was not aware that foetal vision could process FFA in the last trimester.

    fkizz
    Some would go as far as claiming the fetus was not even alive before birth
    How can someone say such a thing.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
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    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    Not really, FFA does not function maturely in infants since it would not fully develop until adulthood; study rather suggest infants do not use FFA to recognize different faces and may not able to distinct individual faces at all until after much growth.
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by hellheaven1987 View Post
    Not really, FFA does not function maturely in infants since it would not fully develop until adulthood; study rather suggest infants do not use FFA to recognize different faces and may not able to distinct individual faces at all until after much growth.
    The point that I was making was that having a functionally distinct area suggests a sort of hardwiring for face recognition in humans. To begin with, it may only distinguish the difference between what is or is not a face (as this study suggests), requiring further input to develop the ability to distinguish between particular faces. Similar to the way vertebrates appear to need to be able to interact with their environment in order for them to learn in detail the meaning of the signals their visual cortex deciphers. An example, otherwise normal cats suspended as kittens so that they had no interaction with their environment are nearly functionally blind despite having apparently normal eyes and visual cortex. They are aware of changes in light and dark but walk off the end of tables having no recognition that the visual input should indicate an edge.
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


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    Copperknickers II's Avatar quaeri, si sapis
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by fkizz View Post
    To be fair being repeteadly told so many times that fetusus are understimated in their life signals, this isn't that surprising.
    What will be interesting is the political and social responses to this.
    Some would go as far as claiming the fetus was not even alive before birth.
    The sad fact is that our society has decided on the value of the lives on the unborn based on what is least inconvenient to the rest of society. I think that the phenomenon of endemic abortion in modern society will be viewed about as favourably by future societies as we view post-birth infanticide in ancient Greece, or the Indian practice of sati. I think 'digital' may come to be used in the same way we use the word 'medieval' today, as a byword for backwardness and brutality.
    A new mobile phone tower went up in a town in the USA, and the local newspaper asked a number of people what they thought of it. Some said they noticed their cellphone reception was better. Some said they noticed the tower was affecting their health.

    A local administrator was asked to comment. He nodded sagely, and said simply: "Wow. And think about how much more pronounced these effects will be once the tower is actually operational."

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    Himster's Avatar Praeses
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    I think that the phenomenon of endemic abortion in modern society will be viewed about as favourably by future societies as we view post-birth infanticide in ancient Greece, or the Indian practice of sati.
    I doubt it.

    I think 'digital' may come to be used in the same way we use the word 'medieval' today, as a byword for backwardness and brutality.
    Inevitably, yes. The same is said of all ages, if one knows enough about it: any age is dripping with the blood of the innocent.
    But compared to issues such as gang raping, child slavery/soldiery, Islamofascism/terrorism, Trump, etc. the issue of hypothetical-babies versus women's rights over their own bodies is a no-brainer....... right now. It's almost unheard of to find someone opposed to abortion on grounds that aren't somehow related to religion/superstition and these grounds are being washed away, with increasing rapidity.
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by Himster View Post
    It's almost unheard of to find someone opposed to abortion on grounds that aren't somehow related to religion/superstition
    Well you can say the same about opposition to anything. Ultimately everything is based on one's sense of right and wrong, which I don't believe that science can prove one way or the other. What is the scientific debunking of this reasoning for example?:

    “Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective [it just depends on how you think about them], and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable “value judgment that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me – after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.” - Ted Bundy

    Scientists would have precisely no answer to that, other than "we just have different opinions; neither is objectively right." But a religious answer would be "that is against the objective moral laws of the universe. I have a right to stop you."

    In America, 20-30% of irreligious people oppose abortion, which is the same percentage who are politically conservative. That is hardly "unheard of." I have noticed that political affiliation is a better predictor of stance on moral issues, than religious affiliation.
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    Copperknickers II's Avatar quaeri, si sapis
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by Himster View Post
    Inevitably, yes. The same is said of all ages, if one knows enough about it: any age is dripping with the blood of the innocent.
    But compared to issues such as gang raping, child slavery/soldiery, Islamofascism/terrorism, Trump, etc. the issue of hypothetical-babies versus women's rights over their own bodies is a no-brainer....... right now. It's almost unheard of to find someone opposed to abortion on grounds that aren't somehow related to religion/superstition and these grounds are being washed away, with increasing rapidity.
    But this is the age when terrorism, slavery, sexual violence and fascist politicians are all getting increasingly less common. Our time will be remembered as the time when these things started to disappear and were only present in backward areas of the world. Indeed people won't associate them with our own time at all, in the same way that today we associate 'enlightenment values' with the 17th and 18th centuries, not because they became common at that time, but because they first started to appear at that time, although of course in 99% of the world outside of Western Europe and the US they were totally unheeded until the early 20th century. Whereas our present time will be remembered for the barbarity not of outlying undeveloped areas, but of the supposedly 'civilised' and 'progressive' areas, of which mass abortion is a central feature much moreso than we find in other areas.

    It's comparable to the gladiators in ancient Rome - of course most areas of the classical world were if anything even more brutal than Rome, but we remember the gladiators because of the paradoxical presence of such a large-scale and unique type of brutality in what was in comparative terms a more civilised area, i.e. we resent the Romans more than their more brutal neighbours because we think they should have known better. This is the general trend throughout both history and modern politics and it will be the same for our current time: we as Westerners will be judged much more harshly than ISIS or Joseph Kony.

    Technology will eventually come up with a way of making abortion obsolete. Probably all women will be sterilised from an early age and have their ova frozen, since feminism is moving this way already and it will be even more desirable with advanced knowledge of genetics. Also, strangely enough feminism often seems to follow the path of what is best for men - sex without any possibility of making the lady pregnant and no effort required to remember to use contraception, sound good gents? Anyway when that happens the convenience argument in favour of abortion will be gone and so there will only be the moral argument against it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with religion by the way - it's pretty simple, living things shouldn't be killed except in case of threat to the life of another. A foetus may be a parasitic organism in the early stages of life but it's pretty hard to make the case that it's not a living thing of some description. Maybe only on the level of an animal, but with vegetarianism and veganism increasing by the day that will itself be enough to protect them once the convenience argument gets made irrelevant, as I say.
    Last edited by Copperknickers II; June 13, 2017 at 11:20 AM.
    A new mobile phone tower went up in a town in the USA, and the local newspaper asked a number of people what they thought of it. Some said they noticed their cellphone reception was better. Some said they noticed the tower was affecting their health.

    A local administrator was asked to comment. He nodded sagely, and said simply: "Wow. And think about how much more pronounced these effects will be once the tower is actually operational."

  14. #14
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    The point that I was making was that having a functionally distinct area suggests a sort of hardwiring for face recognition in humans.
    That's the most reasonable explanation.Yesterday I spoke with a pediatric neurologist, he agrees...
    This is not my area of expertise, and I confess - I'm still amazed.
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    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    That's the most reasonable explanation.Yesterday I spoke with a pediatric neurologist, he agrees...
    This is not my area of expertise, and I confess - I'm still amazed.
    So its more like the Fetus could in theory, only just doesnt actualy do it...
    Last edited by Knight of Heaven; June 18, 2017 at 12:50 PM.

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    Mithradates's Avatar Domesticus
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    How can someone say such a thing.
    There is hope, as it seems.

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    hellheaven1987's Avatar Comes Domesticorum
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    The point that I was making was that having a functionally distinct area suggests a sort of hardwiring for face recognition in humans.
    Yes and I thought that is well-known. Furthermore studies in past decades have suggested that certain facial expressions and recognization of various facial expressions are also hardwired abilities, hence why people with some genetic defections (psychopath, autism) cannot associate with others normally due to lacking of those hardwire abilities.

    By the way those abilities are not just unique to human.
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Certainly noticed this when my son was born. He was delivered by Caesarean section, bit of lung trouble as a result so he didn't see his mum for two hours: the moment he heard her voice he rolled toward her in his little crib, then off to separate rooms to sleep. The next morning he was wheeled into my missus' room and her mum picked him up to pass him over. The boy did a double-take, looking at his grandma and mum which I found extraordinary because he looked at both faces even though his little eyes could not focus yet. My strong feeling is it was more about how they sounded and smelled, but looking at the face was definitely part of mum-recognition (and confusion when there was someone a lot like mum).

    While the tendency to focus on faces being hard wired makes sense I wouldn't imagine it was terribly developed before or at birth.

    The speculation about autism and other aspects of this faculty interests me. There's certainly an aspect with human sexuality, I recall running into some studies about the sexuality of disabled people in the 1990's and the supposed "greater horniness" (I forget the technical term maybe "reported more active sex life") of deaf people (who focus on people's faces for cues) over blind people (relying on sound mostly). IIRC there was speculation that the increased focus on faces that deaf people often employ promoted intimacy, it seemed a little trite at the time.
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    Spear Dog's Avatar Primicerius
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    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    ^ I should have added to my earlier post that newborns exhibit a remarkable learning speed in going from mere recognition of facial stimuli to actual facial recognition (ties in with the survival thing, recognising the primary care giver, i.e; mother, and others important to its' social survival - father, siblings, extended family, etc) and have superior facial recognition skills to older children and adults. Indeed, human infants are savants when it comes to facial recognition, I recall reading an article (just had a quick look for a reference, couldn't find it ) about an experiment in recognising different capuchin monkeys from facial photos. Babies and infants performed very well whereas adults had almost no success in distinguishing between different individual monkeys at all.

    It is amazing how acute this ability seems, as with Cyclops recounting of his son recognising a connection between mother and grandmother almost instantly - a connection I suspect adults without prior knowledge might also statistically under-perform at.






  20. #20

    Default Re: Fetuses can recognize faces

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    The sad fact is that our society has decided on the value of the lives on the unborn based on what is least inconvenient to the rest of society. I think that the phenomenon of endemic abortion in modern society will be viewed about as favourably by future societies as we view post-birth infanticide in ancient Greece, or the Indian practice of sati. I think 'digital' may come to be used in the same way we use the word 'medieval' today, as a byword for backwardness and brutality.
    Endemic abortion started before digital age, so maybe term will be different.

    Let's keep in mind post birth infanticide in greece knew they were doing infanticide and sati practice in India knew that were killing widows, they were honest in that regard.
    Western society spends lots of cash in brainwash propaganda to say it's not alive by any means, possibly tricking other people in the process.
    Last edited by fkizz; June 22, 2017 at 08:29 AM.
    It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.

    -George Orwell

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