Feb 26, 2007《纽时周报全文精译》处处是脸孔 脑内乾坤大 ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME? A grilled cheese sandwich with an image of what some see as the Virgin Mary, sold for $28,000 on eBay. A pirogi, above, is said to bear the likeness of Jesus Christ. Faces can also be seen in a snow-covered view scope, the next, and a cinnamon bun that some describe as resembling Mother Teresa. Why the Human Brain Finds a Face Everywhere 王先棠译 十几年前，佛罗里达州好利坞市的黛安娜‧杜赛尔从某个极不寻常的媒介得到 宗教讯息：她亲手做的一个烤起司三明治。她盯着面包表面褐色的烤焦痕迹， 一张熟悉的脸突然映入眼帘。 More than a decade ago, Diana Duyser of Hollywood, Florida, received a religious message through an unlikely medium: a grilled cheese sandwich she had made herself. As she gazed at the brown skillet marks on the surface of the bread, a familiar visage snapped into focus. 2004年，她跟记者说：「我看见一张脸对着我看；圣母马利亚注视着我。我惊 讶莫名。」 “I saw a face looking up at me; it was the Virgin Mary staring back,” she told reporters in 2004. “I was in total shock.” 杜赛尔将这个已不新鲜的圣物保存十年，摆上eBay拍卖，引发热烈回响，三明治 最後以28,000美元拍出，显示有人跟杜赛尔一样，在这个理论上不可能出现脸孔 的地方发现脸孔。 After holding onto the stale relic for 10 years, Ms. Duyser put it up for sale on eBay, The auction generated so much excitement that the sandwich eventually sold for $28,000, proving that she was not alone in seeing a face where none should reasonably exist. 2006年底，脸孔又上了新闻头条。欧洲太空总署的宇宙探测车「火星特快车号」 拍下火星表面赛多尼亚区截至目前最高品质的三度空间影像，发现一处貌似脸孔 的地形。这些照片再度点燃各国政府企图隐瞒火星上出现智慧生物的阴谋论。 Such faces made headlines again near the end of 2006, when Mars Express, an orbiter from the European Space Agency, captured the highest-quality three-dimensional images to date of what looks like a face in the Cydonia region of Mars. The photos reignited conspiracy theories that governments on Earth are trying to hide the existence of intelligent life on Mars. 我们为什麽处处看到脸孔，包括月球表面、罗夏克墨渍测验、漏油表面的干涉图 样？为什麽有些乐事洋芋片看起来酷似卡斯楚？为何一个与德蕾莎修女面容惊人 相似、外号「修女面包」的肉桂面包被纳许维尔一家咖啡馆摆在玻璃罩下保存多 年？ Why do we see faces everywhere we look: in the Moon, in Rorschach inkblots, in the interference patterns on the surface of oil spills? Why are some Lay’s potato chips the spitting image of Fidel Castro, and why was a cinnamon bun with a striking likeness to Mother Teresa kept for years under glass in a coffee shop in Nashville, where it was nicknamed the Nun Bun? 对脑部如何辨识与处理脸孔资料有全新认识的生物学家与电脑科学家，最近开 始提出一些颇具说服力的解答。 Compelling answers are beginning to emerge from biologists and computer scientists who are gaining new insights into how the brain recognizes and processes facial data. 早在听闻黛安娜‧杜赛尔的烤起司三明治之前，德国不来梅大学神经科学家邹 凤就觉得，人类处理脸孔讯息的方式可能有别於处理其他物体。她猜脑部有个 优先处理脸孔形象的特定区域。 Long before she had heard of Diana Duyser’s grilled-cheese sandwich, Doris Tsao, a neuroscientist at the University of Bremen in Germany, had an inkling that people might process faces differently from other objects. Her suspicion was that a particular area of the brain gives faces priority. 邹凤博士说：「有些中风病患能清楚辨认脸孔之外的所有东西。因此我们开始 研究，脑部是否真有一块专门辨识脸孔的区域。」 “Some patients have strokes and are then able to recognize everything perfectly well except for faces,” Dr. Tsao said. “So we started questioning whether there really might be an area in the brain that is dedicated to face recognition.” 邹凤博士用功能性磁振造影术记录猕猴看到水果、小器具、不规则图案与脸孔 时，脑部哪些区域会有活动。她很快发现，大脑颞叶里三个区域的细胞群似乎 对脸孔有强烈反应。 Dr. Tsao used functional magnetic resonance imaging to record which areas of the brain were activated when macaque monkeys were presented with stimuli including fruits, gadgets, scrambled patterns － and faces. She discovered almost immediately that groups of cells in three regions of the brain’s temporal lobe seemed to be strongly attuned to faces. 邹博士说：「第一天我们把电极接上去时，吓了一跳。一个又一个细胞开始对 脸孔产生反应，对其他物体却毫无反应。」她的研究成果发表於去年十月号 「科学」期刊。 “The first day we put the electrode in, it was shocking,” Dr. Tsao said. “Cell after cell responded to faces but not at all to other objects.” Her results were published in October in the journal Science. 邹博士的研究带来令人惊讶的相关发现：她找出对脸孔有反应的大脑部位，偶 尔也会对那些与脸孔仅有一点相像的物体产生反应。 Dr. Tsao’s investigation yielded a surprising related finding: areas of the brain she had identified as face-specific occasionally lighted up in response to objects that bore only a passing resemblance to faces. 她说：「不是脸孔的物体，也许有某些特徵会微弱刺激这些与脸孔有关的细胞。 如果相似程度超出某种范围，猴子也许会以为看到脸孔。」 “Nonface objects may have certain features that are weakly triggering these face cells,” she said. “If you go above a certain threshold, the monkeys might think that they’re seeing a face.” 她说，如果肉桂面包、露岩与云层形状与真正的脸孔相似度够高，都可能启动脑 部辨识脸孔的雷达。 In the same way, she said, objects like cinnamon buns, rocky outcroppings and cloud formations may set off face radar if they bear enough resemblance to actual faces. 麻省理工学院认知科学家帕万‧辛哈费时数年，想找出哪些特徵会触发这些脸孔 感应细胞。 Pawan Sinha, a cognitive scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has devoted years of research to figuring out just what attributes touch off these face-specific pings. 用来认出潜在的恐怖分子或侦测闯入者的保全软体，必须要能准确分辨各种脸 孔。辛哈博士与同事教导这种软体辨识脸孔时，无意间对人类有时把一个肉桂 面包当肉桂面包，有时把肉桂面包当作神圣修女化身的现象有更深的了解。 Security software that is being developed for identifying potential terrorists or detecting intruders must be able to reliably recognize faces. In teaching the software to do this, Dr. Sinha and his colleagues have arrived at unexpected insights into the question of why we sometimes see a cinnamon bun as a cinnamon bun, and other times as the earthly incarnation of a sainted nun. 电脑蒐集各种脸孔资讯，可在几乎所有存档脸孔中找出重要的关联，但在非脸 孔物体间就很难找到。辛哈博士说：「这些关联其实很简单，例如眼睛的颜色 总是比额头深，嘴巴的颜色也比脸颊深。如果你把大约十二种关联放在一起， 就会有一个用来辨识脸孔的样板。」 As the computer amassed information on diverse faces, it was able to discover relationships that were of great significance to almost all faces, but very few nonfaces. “These turn out to be very simple relationships, things like the eyes are always darker than the forehead, and the mouth is darker than the cheeks,” Dr. Sinha said. “If you put together about 12 of these relationships, you get a template that you can use to locate a face.” 电脑偶尔会发出错误的辨识讯息。辛哈博士说：「这种情况和人类大脑的作用 可能很类似。大脑和电脑一样，试图找出这些脸孔中的规律现象，创造一种标 准形态。」 Once in a while, the computer emits a false alarm. “This is a good analogy for what the human brain might be doing,” Dr. Sinha said. “Like the computer, it’s trying to determine what the regularities are in all of these faces to create a prototype. 他说：「但这种标准形态并不完美，有时真的脸孔特徵与这些规律现象无法吻 合，有时非脸孔物体却能满足这些条件。」 “But this prototype is not perfect,” he said. “Sometimes genuine faces do not match these regularities, and sometimes nonfaces satisfy them.” 换言之，如果一头混色乳牛身上的深浅斑点恰好符合我们心目中的脸孔形象， 我们可能就把这个巧合解释成耶稣基督或玛丽莲梦露显现。 In other words, if the pattern of light and dark patches on a brindle cow happens to correspond to our conceptions of what a face should look like, we may interpret the coincidence as a visitation from Jesus Christ or Marilyn Monroe. 波士顿大学神经科学家渡边健夫说，人类在不同物体中发现脸孔的倾向源自神经 结构，但我们每天所见的大量真实脸孔，也可能多少促成「修女面包」现象。他 在学习过程方面的研究也显示，脑部受到频繁刺激後，就算刺激物不在，大脑仍 会感受到这个刺激物。 While the human tendency to see faces in other objects is rooted in neural architecture, the large number of actual faces we see every day may also be partly responsible for the Nun Bun phenomenon, said Takeo Watanabe, a neuroscientist at Boston University. His studies of learning processes show that after the brain is bombarded with a stimulus, it continues to perceive that stimulus even when it is not present. 由於人们随时随地看到脸孔，人对脸孔的敏感度也高到足以持续产生错误的确认 讯息。这种对普通刺激的超强敏感倾向，也许代表一种生存优势。 People have gotten so used to seeing faces everywhere that sensitivity to them is high enough to produce constant false positives. This tendency to become hyperattuned to common stimuli may represent a survival advantage. 渡边博士说：「举例来说，假如你活在原始时代，对老虎出没非常敏感就是好事。」 “If you lived in primeval times, for instance,” Dr. Watanabe said, “it would be good to be very sensitized to tigers.” By ELIZABETH SVOBODA 原文中提到的一些图片： http://0rz.tw/c02rX 原文参照 http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/13/news/faces.php 关键字句 本文重点有二：脑（brain）与脸（face）。作者详细探讨人脑从各种物体发 现脸孔的可能机制（possible mechanism）。有趣的是，人类竟会在面包这 种「不可能的媒介」（unlikely medium）上找到宗教形象（religious image）。 神经科学家（neuroscientist）与电脑科学家（computer scientist）一直在 研究大脑如何辨识与处理脸孔资料（how the brain recognizes and processes facial data），想对人脑有更深入的了解（gain new insights into the human brain）。 脑部的神经结构（neural architecture）非常复杂，不同区域（areas of the brain）各司其职，但是某些区域与脸部辨识关系密切（face-specific）。 虽然眼前的物体不是人脸，但是眼睛一看到形状酷似卡斯楚尊容（the spitting image of Castro）的洋芋片或是和德蕾莎修女惊人相似的面包（a bun with a striking likeness to Mother Teresa），就会触动与辨识脸孔有关的脑部细 胞（trigger face cells）。 被刺激活化（activated）的细胞，会发出错误警告（emit a false alarm）， 接连产生伪阳性反应（produce constant false positives），把不太像人脸 （bear a passing resemblance to face）的东西也看成人脸， 恐怕是过度敏 感了（over sensitized ）。 本文开头说，一位妇人凝视（gaze at）自制烤起司三明治时，一张熟悉的面容 突然浮现眼前（A familiar visage snapped into focus ）。我们也可以说， 经过高人指点，原本模糊不清的思绪瞬间有了焦点（Fuzzy thoughts suddenly snap into focus.）。 Snap这个动词有「拍照按下快门」之意，你可以说，她拍了一张日出的照片（She snapped a picture of the sunrise.）。 本文第七段提到，不来梅大学的邹凤博士依稀觉得（have an inkling）人类辨识 脸孔的机制与辨识其他物体的机制不同。Inkling这个字，有模糊理解（vague understanding）之意，因此have an inkling与havea clue语意类似，都没有达到 完全理解（complete understanding），仍处於研究探索（investigation）阶段。 （王先棠） -- 赵客缦胡缨 吴钩霜雪明 银鞍照白马 飒沓如流星 十步杀一人 千里不留行 事了拂衣去 深藏身与名 闲过信陵饮 脱剑膝前横 将炙啖朱亥 持觞劝侯赢 三盃吐然诺 五岳倒为轻 眼花耳热後 意气素霓生 救赵挥金槌 邯郸先震惊 千秋二壮士 烜赫大梁城 纵使侠骨香 不惭世上英 谁能书合下 白首太玄经 李白 侠客行 --

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