Recognition (conscious or unconscious) of faces. In adults, two sources of evidence suggest face recognition ability have genetic/hereditary components: fMRI activation patterns stemming from the ventral visual system have greater concordance for monozygotic relative to dizygotic twins, and an inability to recognize faces tends to run in families without any member having prosopagnosia. Much research has been carried out on age-related changes in face recognition. A number of studies (e.g., based on the visual preference technique) have supported the claim that human newborns show evidence for recognizing and discriminating faces despite relatively poor visual acuity. Whether such an ability at such an early age (some studies tested newborns in first few minutes after birth) is innate or arises in part from fetal visual experience is ongoing and unresolved issue. Beyond the newborn period, face recognition seems to have adult-like properties by 4 years-of-age. In contrast, brain imaging studies reveal neural activation patterns to faces do not become noticeably mature until around 7 years-old (added to this puzzling contrast, the fusiform face area shows marked volumetric increases from this age onward and into adulthood).
See Agnosia, Brain (neuro-) imaging, Configural processing, CONLERN, CONSPECIFIC, Face processing, Functional magnetic imaging (fMRI), Fusiform gyrus, Innate (1), Monozygotic twins, N170, Prosopagnosia, Ventral visual pathway (or stream), Visual acuity, Visually reinforced preferencial looking technique