Always forget a face? The science of face-blindness

How to remember names

Journalist Lisa Kanarek sought to become a “super-recognizer,” someone with exceptional face recognition abilities who never forgot a name. She enlisted the help of a neurosurgeon and a world record holder in memory. The experts suggested a few tips and tricks to connect names and faces and erase the need to say, "Hey, you!" again.

Blindfolded people could identify objects by touch alone a week after encountering them

These touch memories are more complex and durable than previously thought. In research published in 2018, blindfolded volunteers touched over 150 household objects for about 10 seconds each, and afterward correctly identified the objects more than 90 percent of the time when presented with the object and a similar one. Participants still knew most of the objects a week later with about 85 percent accuracy. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Aphantasia involves a lack of mental images—but doesn't affect behavior

The condition, generally known about for over a century, first received its name in 2015 by researcher Adam Zeman. An estimated 4% of people lack this ability to perceive mental images, and research suggests this deficiency does not have any practical impact on behavior.

Humans can't smell the inside of their nose due to olfactory fatigue

Once a person is accustomed to a specific odor, their neurons have trouble continuing to respond to that smell because of that familiarity. That's why humans may not notice when their house smells like trash until they leave the house and then return to it.

The science of optical illusions

The human brain has developed cognitive shortcuts to help us navigate in a world where our visual senses are constantly bombarded of information. But these shortcuts can also be exploited, tricking the brain into telling us something is happening when it really isn't. This short video unpacks the neuroscience behind some of the most common (but perplexing) optical illusions.

The doorway effect is when people forget their task when entering a new space

The "why did I come in here?" feeling after walking into a room comes from the brain creating event boundaries to organize memories. Mentally revisiting a previous room can help recall tasks and reverse memory loss. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Why does that bag look like a face?

If you've ever spotted a face hidden in an inanimate object, you've engaged in a timeless phenomenon known as pareidolia. This three-minute video explains why and how it happens.

Why do some people always get lost?

Using GPS, anthropological data, and VR, scientists have learned that one's sense of direction is largely influenced by upbringing. A person's wayfinding ability can be measured by how accurately they point toward an out-of-sight location, a challenge further complicated by imagining they're somewhere else and pointing toward a third location. Anxiety, safety concerns, and dislike of wandering can negatively impact one's sense of direction, which can improve with practice.

When to see a doctor over memory lapses

Memory includes various, distinct functions, like working memory (storing information temporarily) and procedural memory (your body's ability to perform a task unconsciously). Forgetting a word or losing your keys can feel like red flag memory lapses, but they are, in fact, language or attention problems, not memory ones. However, a lapse on top of stress, lack of sleep, chronic dysfunction, or an injury may be a red flag to see your doctor.

The dreaming brain, as understood by scientists

Technology has advanced to where the seemingly separate fields of psychology and neuroscience are asking the same questions about dreams, such as whether they're more closely related to perception or visualization. Some field-intersecting findings include research that shows people with impaired face perception don't dream of faces, those with brain legion-related cognition difficulties deal with similar issues in dreams, and children's dreams change in parallel to their cognitive development.

Individuals with synesthesia experience involuntarily overlapping sensations

Tasting words or seeing colors in music results from the brain retaining extrasensory connections from infancy. While most lose these neural pathways during development, about 4% of people are synesthetes, maintaining them without realizing it's unusual.

How family members disappeared into dementia

This narrative feature describes one family's troubling experience with frontotemporal dementia, or FTD, which emerges in the prime of adult life — as young as 40, in some cases — and degrades the brain's ability to plan, organize, express language, understand social cues, and exercise judgment.

Everything scientists could learn by looking at your skull

Our skulls are all unique, but they also share characteristics across groups of people. In the absence of fingerprints, forensic scientists can learn a lot about you just from your skull.

About 12.5% of US adults experience a phobia in their lifetime, a diagnosis that hinges on the intense fear interfering with daily life and persisting for at least six months.

Tony Hawk often doesn't get recognized in public

Tony Hawk is frequently misrecognized—partly because he's older now and his legal name is Anthony—with strangers often telling him he "looks like Tony Hawk" without realizing he is, in fact, the famed skateboarder.

The overlooked physical causes of insomnia

Persistent lack of sleep is dangerous for anyone, but women are especially unlikely to have their symptoms taken seriously. This article highlights the physical causes of insomnia—a condition often written off as solely psychological—and the importance of early diagnosis. The writer, Courtney Maum, was diagnosed with an anterior nasal valve collapse as the source of her insomnia.

Does our fear of Alzheimer's create stigma around its treatment?

Surveys suggest our fear of Alzheimer's as a disease outranks that of heart disease and cancer. This piece argues our fear of aging and the slipping away of our mental capacities make it more difficult to treat Alzheimer's compassionately.

Unlike milder fears, phobias may get in the way of proceeding with your life

Clinicians may recommend exposure therapy—exposing oneself to the thing triggering fears in some doses—as one way to help overcome a fear.

Schizophrenia literally means 'split mind'—a reference to patients' break with reality

Contrary to the name, patients do not have multiple personalities. Rather, the split mind refers to the sufferers' inability to distinguish reality from hallucinations when they are aware and awake. Cognitive difficulties, including challenges focusing and communicating are also common among those with schizophrenia, as well as auditory and visual hallucinations.

Why portraits of Neanderthals vary so drastically

Neanderthals, humanity's long-lost genealogical cousins, are often portrayed as bumbling, hairy, cave-dwelling misogynists. But other efforts show tall, dignified creatures not too different from contemporary people. This article explores why most visual interpretations of Neanderthals are more in the service of social or political beliefs instead of science.

The average person can only detect someone is lying 54% of the time

Scientific research shows that avoiding eye contact or fidgeting—behaviors typically associated with deception—do not reliably communicate dishonesty. Polygraph tests are considered "junk science," with the best means of detection relying on evidence and contradictions.

Why dizziness is still a mystery

Dizzy spells can completely upend the lives of those suddenly struggling to find their footing. Despite this severe impact, the different flavors of dizziness and their sources continue to elude medical understanding. This article follows a health...

Surreal backgrounds, asymmetry, and indecipherable text can help identify deepfakes

Differences in the backgrounds of training data with the same subject introduce variability, resulting in background textures and text that lack realistic detail. Difficulties with managing long-distance dependencies, the complexity of hair, and other real-world phenomena introduce errors that can be used to flag AI-generated content.

The unavailability bias says what we don't see must not exist

Before social media, information was more scarce, and it was the norm not to know much about some controversy or episode. This led to a common prejudice: the availability bias, that what is at hand must be true (in business, the courts, finance, and many fields). With information overload today, the inverse occurs: when something is missing (like the photo of a suspect), it makes us think the suspect does not exist.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

See the global blindness burden by cause and continent

These charts show the estimated number of people worldwide with blindness due to cataract, glaucoma, refractive disorders, age-related macular degeneration, malaria, river blindness, trachoma, and other causes.

Company names you may have been mispronouncing

Global company names often get Americanized or anglicized to the point where they’re unrecognizable. Here's a helpful explainer on how to say a dozen of them, from Adidas to Huawei.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

This poison ivy knowledge quiz—accompanied by photos of the plant's varied forms—may help you identify this common rash-inducing growth.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.