Weird hobby, I know, but when she looked at images of people's faces, she noticed something peculiar about her responses.

我知道這個愛好很奇怪，但當她看到人們的臉部影像時，她發現自己的反應有些奇特。

A small part of her brain was way more active than the others.

她大腦的一小部分比其他部分更加活躍。

As it turned out, she had stumbled upon a new part of the brain.

結果，她偶然發現了大腦的一個新部位。

Today, it's called the fusiform face area, an entire region partly dedicated to recognizing faces.

如今，它被稱為 "紡錘形臉部區域"，整個區域的一部分專門用於識別人臉。

The discovery revolutionized this area of neuroscience, and led to some other pretty amazing findings.

這一發現徹底改變了神經科學的這一領域，並帶來了其他一些驚人的發現。

Like the fact that blind people use this area of their brain to identify faces, too.

比如盲人也用大腦的這一區域來識別人臉。

And that sometimes, all you need to recognize a face is the sound of chewing.

有時候，你只需要聽到咀嚼聲就能認出一張臉。

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This episode was made in partnership with the Kavli Prize.

本集與卡弗裡獎（Kavli Prize）合作製作。

The Kavli Prize honors scientists for breakthroughs in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience, transforming our understanding of the big, the small, and the complex.

卡弗裡獎旨在表彰在天體物理學、納米科學和神經科學領域取得突破的科學家，這些突破改變了我們對大、小和複雜事物的理解。

There's a long, sometimes proud, sometimes regrettable, history of scientists experimenting on themselves.

科學家用自己做實驗的歷史由來已久，有時令人自豪，有時令人遺憾。

It's happened enough times to fill multiple SciShow videos with examples.

這種情況發生的次數足以用多個 SciShow 視頻來舉例說明。

I'm not saying it's the recommended protocol, but there's something kinda cool about a scientist who's so confident in the safety of their methods that they become their own test subject.

我並不是說這是推薦的方案，但科學家對自己方法的安全性如此有信心，以至於成為自己的試驗對象，這也挺酷的。

And Kanwisher is certainly part of that history.

坎威舍無疑是這段歷史的一部分。

In her case, she studied her own brain.

就她而言，她研究了自己的大腦。

Let me transport you back in time to the late 90s.

讓我帶您回到上世紀 90 年代末。

Seinfeld was reinventing the sitcom, the Cold War was finally over, and Smash Mouth was popular… for some reason.

當時，《宋飛正重塑情景喜劇》、冷戰終於結束、"大嘴巴"（Smash Mouth）流行......出於某種原因。

Things were changing in neuroscience, too.

神經科學領域的情況也在發生變化。

Scientists were finally getting to use tools like functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI machines, that let them see inside the brain while it was still working.

科學家們終於可以使用功能性磁共振成像（或稱 fMRI 機器）等工具，讓他們在大腦工作時看到大腦內部的情況。

At the time, there were only four fMRI machines in the world.

當時，全世界只有四臺 fMRI 機器。

So if you had a chance to use one between the hours of 6 and 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning, you jumped at it.

是以，如果你有機會在週六早上 6 點到 9 點之間使用它，你一定會抓住這個機會。

And if the experiments you were able to run at that unpopular time of the week didn't yield significant results, well, you didn't get out of bed for nothing.

如果你在一週中那個不受歡迎的時間進行的實驗沒有取得顯著效果，那麼，你就沒有白下床。

You're going in that machine!

你要上那臺機器

Or at least Kanwisher did.

至少 Kanwisher 是這麼說的。

At first, she wanted to study if our mind's eye uses the same neural pathways as our actual eyes.

起初，她想研究我們的 "心眼 "是否與我們的眼睛使用相同的神經通路。

She wondered at what point in the process attention butts in, and how we reconcile new information with what we've seen in the past.

她想知道，在這個過程中，注意力會在什麼時候介入，以及我們如何將新資訊與過去所見進行協調。

But after those investigations didn't pan out,

但這些調查都沒有結果、

Kanwisher figured her best shot at getting some publishable data was to look at faces.

Kanwisher 認為，要想獲得一些可發表的數據，最好的辦法就是觀察人臉。

Neuroscientists knew that humans and other animals have brain cells that respond to faces, so that was at least a starting point.

神經科學家知道，人類和其他動物的腦細胞會對人臉做出反應，是以這至少是一個起點。

But they didn't know much else about the process.

但他們對這一過程並不瞭解。

When Kanwisher got in the fMRI machine and looked at pictures of faces, she noticed that one part of her brain really stood out from the others.

當 Kanwisher 坐進 fMRI 機器，觀看人臉圖片時，她發現自己大腦的一個部分確實與眾不同。

It was way more actively involved in facial processing than any other part.

它比其他任何部分都更積極地參與面部處理。

She knew she was onto something.

她知道自己發現了什麼。

So her research group compared several other people's brains and found that, in many cases, this region of their brains was particularly excited by faces, too.

於是，她的研究小組比較了其他幾個人的大腦，發現在很多情況下，他們大腦的這一區域也會因為人臉而特別興奮。

The fMRI images showed much less activity in that area of the brain when her study participants looked at pictures of houses, hands, crabs, or other objects.

fMRI 影像顯示，當她的研究對象觀看房屋、手、螃蟹或其他物體的圖片時，大腦該區域的活動要少得多。

It appeared to be attuned to faces.

它似乎與人臉很合拍。

And that includes the faces of other animals or cartoons.

這包括其他動物或卡通人物的臉。

So that explains why they decided to include face in the name of this region of the brain.

這也就解釋了為什麼他們決定在大腦這一區域的名稱中加入 "臉"。

And since it happened to be located in a part of the fusiform gyrus, presto, we had the fusiform face area, or FFA.

由於它恰好位於紡錘形回的一部分，於是就有了紡錘形面區，或稱 FFA。

Kanwisher's team wouldn't have discovered the FFA without the data from people in fMRI machines.

如果沒有人們在 fMRI 機器中獲得的數據，坎維什的團隊就不會發現 FFA。

But those techniques couldn't tell them what was going on inside the FFA, like which brain cells were responsible for focusing on each minute facial detail.

但這些技術無法告訴他們 FFA 內部發生了什麼，比如哪些腦細胞負責關注面部的每一個微小細節。

For that information, one of her postdoctoral researchers,

關於這方面的資訊，她的一位博士後研究員、

Winrich Freiwald, and a collaborator, Doris Sal, turned to monkeys.

Winrich Freiwald 和合作者 Doris Sal 轉而研究猴子。

The monkey version of the FFA is not identical to ours, but it's similar in its selectivity for faces.

猴子版本的 FFA 與我們的不完全相同，但它對人臉的選擇性很相似。

In fact, these researchers published a whole monkey-human comparison, showing how similar they are.

事實上，這些研究人員發表了一份猴子與人類的整體對比報告，顯示了它們之間的相似性。

So they put monkeys through the fMRI machine, just like Kanwisher and the other human participants.

於是，他們把猴子放進了 fMRI 機器，就像 Kanwisher 和其他人類參與者一樣。

The monkeys were shown the same kind of images that the humans had been.

猴子們看到了與人類相同的影像。

And the researchers recorded responses of individual cells within the monkey FFA.

研究人員還記錄了猴子 FFA 中單個細胞的反應。

They found that more than 90% of them were dedicated to facial recognition.

他們發現，其中 90% 以上專門用於面部識別。

Now that they knew that most cells in the monkey FFA worked together on the same project of recognizing a face, this research team took their findings to the next level.

既然他們知道猴子 FFA 中的大多數細胞都在共同完成識別人臉的項目，這個研究小組就把他們的發現提升到了一個新的水準。

They successfully predicted which face the monkey was looking at based on which cells were active.

他們根據哪些細胞處於活躍狀態，成功地預測出猴子正在看哪張臉。

It's like looking at a quadratic equation and knowing what shape will appear on the resulting graph.

這就好比看著一元二次方程，就知道結果圖上會出現什麼形狀。

But for brains.

但要有頭腦。

Like, literal mind reading.

比如，字面上的讀心術。

As you've probably guessed, monkey mind reading wasn't necessarily the end goal of these studies.

你可能已經猜到，猴子讀心術並不一定是這些研究的最終目的。

People are pretty self-centered.

人們總是以自我為中心。

So we still had a lot to learn about how human FFAs work under different circumstances.

是以，我們還有很多東西要學習，瞭解人類的 FFAs 在不同情況下是如何工作的。

Like, when you can't see faces at all.

比如，當你完全看不到臉的時候。

Which led to the next study.

這就引出了下一項研究。

The most surprising thing about the FFA might not be how specific it gets, but how broadly it's used.

FFA 最令人驚訝的地方可能不是它有多麼具體，而是它的使用範圍有多麼廣泛。

I mean, you could be born blind, and still have an active FFA used for the same purposes as a sighted person's.

我的意思是，你可以天生失明，但仍然可以擁有活躍的 FFA，其用途與視力正常的人相同。

This was another big Kanwisher study.

這是另一項重要的康維世研究。

One of the first challenges her team faced was designing an experiment for people who can't see.

她的團隊面臨的第一個挑戰就是為看不見的人設計實驗。

They got around that in a few ways.

他們用了幾種方法來解決這個問題。

One of them was 3D-printed models of faces, hands, chairs, and mazes for blind people to touch while they were in an fMRI machine.

其中之一是 3D 打印的人臉、手、椅子和迷宮模型，供盲人在 fMRI 機器中觸摸。

They tested sighted people to see how their brains responded to touching a face versus seeing one.

他們對視力正常的人進行了測試，看看他們的大腦對觸摸一張臉和看到一張臉的反應如何。

In both cases, the FFA was activated.

在這兩種情況下，食品添加劑都被激活了。

Then they compared the result of blind participants touching those models with sighted participants doing the same, and they found their results lined up really nicely.

然後，他們將盲人参與者觸摸這些模型的結果與視力正常的參與者進行同樣操作的結果進行了比較，發現他們的結果非常吻合。

And to add another layer of assurance, they swapped out the feeling of a face for the sounds of a face.

為了再添一層保障，他們把臉的感覺換成了臉的聲音。

They compared laughing and chewing with other sounds, like walking, clapping, engines, and waves.

他們將笑聲和咀嚼聲與走路聲、鼓掌聲、發動機聲和海浪聲等其他聲音進行了比較。

And the laughing and chewing sounds that came from faces activated the participants' FFAs more than any other sounds tested.

與其他聲音相比，來自人臉的笑聲和咀嚼聲更能激活參與者的FFA。

Whether it's through touch or sound, they showed that you don't need to see a face to recognize one.

無論是通過觸摸還是聲音，他們都表明，你不需要看到一張臉就能認出一個人。

In fact, the FFA works the same way for people who have never seen a thing in their lives and people who look at stuff all day every day.

事實上，FFA 對那些一輩子都沒見過什麼東西的人和那些每天都在看東西的人來說，作用是一樣的。

Maybe because it's connected to the same other parts of the brain that help fill in the blanks.

也許是因為它與大腦中幫助填補空白的其他部分相連。

Which might explain why there are people who can see but still don't recognize faces.

這或許可以解釋為什麼有些人雖然能看見，卻仍然認不出人臉。

It's a condition called prosopagnosia.

這是一種叫做 "前視症 "的疾病。

In those cases, the FFA seems to work just like anyone else's, but its communication with other parts of the brain may go haywire.

在這種情況下，FFA 似乎和其他人一樣工作，但它與大腦其他部分的交流可能會出現混亂。

Thanks to our understanding of the role FFA plays in facial recognition, we're getting closer to figuring out what's going on with that condition and others like it.

由於我們瞭解了 FFA 在面部識別中的作用，我們越來越接近弄清這種情況和其他類似情況是怎麼回事。

So, just like we needed multiple researchers to come together to make these discoveries, we need many parts of the brain to work together to create our view of the world and the people in it.

是以，就像我們需要多名研究人員共同完成這些發現一樣，我們也需要大腦的多個部分協同工作，才能創造出我們對世界和人的看法。

For their contributions to our understanding of facial recognition,

以表彰他們對我們理解面部識別所做的貢獻、

Kanwisher, Freiwald, and Cao were awarded the 2024 Neuroscience Kavli Prize.

Kanwisher、Freiwald 和 Cao 獲得了 2024 年神經科學卡弗利獎。

You can learn more about their research and personal journeys at www.kavliprize.org.

您可以在 www.kavliprize.org 上了解他們的研究和個人歷程。

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