Comments on: Pareidolia In The Brain

By: Ruth

Ruth — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:00:24 +0000

It’s a ‘Wii me’ Mary!! Sorry, I got so distracted by Wii Mary I couldn’t concentrate on the article – seems from a few of the above I’m not alone.

By: Equalism Activism » ‘Accidental’ Jesus Painting and Other Illusions of an Uncritical Mind

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:48:12 +0000

[...] like to learn more about the fascinating phenomenon of pareidolia check out this entry on Neurologica, the blog of Steven Novella, host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast and the following, [...]

By: godkillzyou

godkillzyou — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:29:56 +0000

Isn’t that Kenny Loggins?

By: Mary-eidolia | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Mary-eidolia | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:00:14 +0000

[...] Note: After drafting this post, I found out my friend and fellow skeptic Steve Novella has written about this event as well. [...]

By: Elwood

Elwood — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:01:30 +0000

Steve, this image is in an axial plane, not a coronal plane.
But it is upside-down, with convention placing the anterior (i.e. eyes) at the top of the axial images. Makes me wonder how Ms Latrimore found Mary in the first instance… or perhaps Mary found her??
I didn’t know it was called pareidolia, but when I started ultrasound.. I just kept seeing seals morphing into dogs in real-time imaging in the abdomen.

By: thecardiffgiant

thecardiffgiant — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:19:06 +0000

By the way, although he doesn’t use the term pareidolia, Scott McCloud’s excellent book Understanding Comics deals with these kinds of patterns in explaining how comics art does what it does. He uses the classic example of the face in the electrical socket among others.

By: thecardiffgiant

thecardiffgiant — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:14:05 +0000

I thought I saw a flux capacitor.

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:04:26 +0000

superdave, you can “look” at any cross section at any arbitrary angle. That is far more than 6 degrees of freedom. If we limit the resolution to 1 degree and 1 mm slices, for a brain ~14cm diameter, that is 140 slices per angle. Because there are 3 orthogonal angles, the total number of slices that can be derived from a single 3-D scan are 140*90*90*90 for a total of ~100,000,000 separate and unique images.

To consider it another way, because the slices can be made at any arbitrary angle, the first slice (which is tangent to the brain surface) can start at any point on the brain surface characterized by the 3 angles that uniquely locate that tangent point.

It is inconceivable to me that in 100,000,000 images of neuroanatomy, that images suggestive of something couldn’t be found.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:21:58 +0000

If the MRI were autographed by Mary, I would buy it to go along with my autographed photo of Jesus.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:02:00 +0000

did i post that or just think it?