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Holiday reading

Pareidolia and clinical reasoning: the pattern awakens

Jared Baylis and Daniel K. Ting
CMAJ December 08, 2015 187 (18) 1364; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.151079
Jared Baylis
Department of Emergency Medicine, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC
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  • For correspondence: jbaylis@alumni.ubc.ca
Daniel K. Ting
Department of Emergency Medicine, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC
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A 20-year-old woman presented to our emergency department after a cliff-jumping adventure went awry. The ultrasound of the aorta was benign, but a “Darth Vader” sign found off the reflection of the spine was no Jedi mind trick (Figure 1). The ability to detect an aneurysm is insignificant next to the power of the Force!

Figure 1:
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Figure 1:

The Darth Vader sign.

Pareidolia is a phenomenon of recognizing patterns, shapes and familiar objects — often faces — where they do not actually exist.1 There are several well-known examples in popular culture, including most recently a perception of Vladimir Putin’s resemblance in a flock of birds, the image of Jesus on toast or the “Face on Mars” captured by the Viking 1 orbiter. Examples achieving popular notoriety are found in medicine as well, particularly with diagnostic imaging.

Pareidolia is recognized in humans as young as eight months old.2 Compared with other types of illusion, pareidolia is unique in how the illusion often becomes more intense with increased attention to it. Similar neural processes trigger pareidolic illusions and visual hallucinations, which has led to speculation that pareidolia represents a susceptibility to visual hallucinations.1 Conversely, other studies have shown that the right temporal lobe discriminates between real and illusory faces but is highly suggestible, consistent with a more benign prognosis.3

Could there be more to pareidolia than sheer entertainment value? Simply put, pareidolia is perceiving a meaningful pattern in meaningless noise. In medicine, we learn to detect illness patterns in the noise of nonspecific signs and symptoms.

Footnotes

  • Competing interests: None declared.

  • This article has been peer reviewed.

  • The authors have obtained patient consent.

References

  1. ↵
    1. Uchiyama M,
    2. Nishio Y,
    3. Yokoi K,
    4. et al
    . Pareidolia in Parkinson’s disease without dementia: a positron emission tomography study. Parkinsonism Relat Disord 2015;21:603–9.
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
  2. ↵
    1. Kato M,
    2. Mugitani R
    . Pareidolia in infants. PLoS ONE 2015;10: e0118539.
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
  3. ↵
    1. Liu J,
    2. Li J,
    3. Feng L,
    4. et al
    . Seeing Jesus in toast: neural and behavioral correlates of face pareidolia. Cortex 2014;53:60–77.
    OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
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Canadian Medical Association Journal: 187 (18)
CMAJ
Vol. 187, Issue 18
8 Dec 2015
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Pareidolia and clinical reasoning: the pattern awakens
Jared Baylis, Daniel K. Ting
CMAJ Dec 2015, 187 (18) 1364; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.151079

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Pareidolia and clinical reasoning: the pattern awakens
Jared Baylis, Daniel K. Ting
CMAJ Dec 2015, 187 (18) 1364; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.151079
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  • On the road from Bethany
  • LimitationsAn experiment in open peer review
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