UK: Recognising faces - it's genetic

New research from University College London indicates that the ability to recognise people's faces is genetically based.

The finding is based on a study which found the ability to recognise faces was much more similar for identical twins than for non-identical twins.

The researchers also found that the genetic effects that allow people to recognise faces are linked to a highly specific mechanism in the brain, unrelated to other brain processes such as the ability to recognise words or abstract art.

"Face recognition is a skill that we depend on daily and considerable variability exists in the ability to recognise faces. Our results show that genetic differences are responsible for the great majority of the difference in face recognition ability between people," said Dr Brad Duchaine from UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

The study was based on 164 identical twins, who share all of their genes, and 125 non-identical same-sex twins, who share 50% of their genes. They were tested on their ability to learn six faces and recognise them in different poses and lighting.

The scientists then looked at the similarity between scores for both types of twin pairs. The correlation for identical twin pairs was 0.70, while the correlation for non-identical twins was less than half that, at 0.29. The difference suggests that the similarity in identical twin pairs is due to their shared genes, rather than shared family environment.

"We are excited about this finding because the brain mechanisms carrying out face recognition are fairly well understood, meaning that the high heritability of face recognition could provide a good opportunity to connect genes to brain mechanisms and then to behaviour," said Duchaine.

The research also investigated whether the brain processes for recognising faces were related to more general recognition processes. Twins and a large cohort of non-twins were tested on face recognition and their ability to recognise previously remembered words and previously learned abstract art.

The results showed the latter abilities were only weakly related to face recognition ability. The research was studied in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .