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The role of eyebrows in face recognition [pdf] (web.mit.edu)
26 points by stacktrust on June 12, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments


I have only one eye, one that does not even work very well. However, in a lecture theatre I can recognise students in the back row and even know when they are making eye contact with me. Considering the poverty of information that my brain is working with that's pretty amazing.


> We report experimental results which suggest that for face recognition the eyebrows may be at least as influential as the eyes. Specifically, we find that the absence of eyebrows in familiar faces leads to a very large and significant disruption in recognition performance. In fact, a significantly greater decrement in face recognition is observed in the absence of eyebrows than in the absence of eyes.


Lack of eyes look exactly like eyes closed. Imagine not being able to recognize someone simply because they have their eyes shut.


Babies believe this.


A while back I did a saliency map by moving a square pixel all across a face image & comparing the embedding to the orginal image. Turns out it is just the T shape of our face that had the largest impact. Not the cheeks or forehead.


This comes as no surprise and is pretty much what I teach my drawing students. nice to see it confirmed. Did you publish this?

When drawing, novice artists give this T shape the maximum attention to the exclsioon of all else.


Didn't publish in public, I'll see if I can recreate it.




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