What happens in the brain when you recognise a friend's face in a crowd? · Grey Matter

The visual cortex extracts edges and features, and the fusiform face area on the underside of the temporal lobe (larger on the right) assembles them into a face and matches it to the faces it knows.

What happens in the brain when you recognise a friend's face in a crowd?

The visual cortex extracts edges and features, and the fusiform face area on the underside of the temporal lobe (larger on the right) assembles them into a face and matches it to the faces it knows. The anterior temporal lobe retrieves who the person is, the hippocampus brings back where and when you last met, and the amygdala and reward circuits add the warmth or unease that belongs to that person. Damage to the fusiform region can leave someone seeing a face clearly and recognising nobody (prosopagnosia), and recognising friends by their voice instead.