What’s in a face? Introducing the special section on Face Science.

Abstract

The faces of animals are central to their functioning in lived environments. For mammals, faces are usually the location of the sense organs, and thus provide the primary way of living in umwelten1 (umwelt is the world as experienced by a particular organism). Mammalian faces are also an important location of non-verbal communication and expression, and convey a wide range of emotional and social information; for humans and many other primates, faces are also key for personal identity. The special significance of the face is likely the reason that the brains of primates have multiple face-selective cortical areas, the most well-known region in humans being the fusiform face area.2