For the majority of us though, our face recognition ability falls between these extremes. But why are there such huge individual differences? How do these abilities affect us and where do they come from? Psychologists have started to investigate such questions, and found several answers. For example, we have discovered that it is linked to personality.

Face recognition differences may reflect processing or structural differences in the brain. For example, people with prosopagnosia between brain regions in the face processing network.

Another idea is that face recognition ability is related to other more general cognitive abilities, like memory or visual processing. Here, though, findings are mixed. Some research between face recognition and specific abilities like visual processing. But other research .

Yet another possibility is that individual differences in face recognition reflect a person’s personality or their social and emotional functioning. Interestingly, face recognition ability to measures of empathy and anxiety.

Empathy reflects a person’s ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. In 2010, researchers asked volunteers to try and remember the identity of a number of faces presented one at a time. They were later presented with the same faces mixed together with new faces and were asked to state whether each face was “old” (learnt) or “new”. The performance was measured by the number of learnt faces correctly identified as being familiar. The researchers found that those who rated themselves as high in empathy at a face recognition memory task than those with low empathy skills.

Actor Brad Pitt struggles to recognise faces. 

Research has also found that people who report significantly have better face recognition skills than those who are have higher anxiety.

Interestingly, more recent research has suggested the link between anxiety and face recognition ability may be , and may be particularly (social anxiety).

Situational anxiety may also play a role. For example, face recognition may be impaired when an eyewitness is asked to try and identify the face of a suspect viewed in a stressful situation.

Personality

In our own work we have considered the relationship between extroversion and individual face recognition ability. Extroverts are known to be superior at decoding social information and to be more involved in social activities than introverts. It may therefore be that extroverts are more skilled at recognising different identities.

In a previous study, researchers collected data from a group of 20 highly extroverted and 23 highly introverted volunteers (from an original sample of 339 volunteers). They found that extroverts in a face recognition memory task compared with the introverts.

In our own work we looked at 100 volunteers . The volunteers were shown famous faces and were asked to try and identify them by giving their name or some other identifying information.

Volunteers were also asked to say whether two unfamiliar faces belonged to the same person or different people – a task dubbed face matching. While there was no relationship between extroversion and face matching, there was a positive relationship between extroversion and famous face recognition. So to answer our own question, although there is individual variation, extroverts do tend to be better at recognising faces.

We do not yet understand the importance and reason for these findings, however. It may be that extroversion causes superior face recognition or that people who are better at identifying faces become more extroverted as a result.

If so, then a person’s inability to learn and recognise faces may lead them to become more introverted, to avoid potentially embarrassing social situations. Alternatively, introverted people may meet fewer people and therefore never develop good face recognition skills.

It may also work both ways. If you are slightly worse at recognising faces to start with you may end up meeting fewer people, and therefore becoming even worse at it over time. It could also be that both extroversion and face recognition are related to yet another factor that we still don’t know about.

In future work, we need to consider how our findings with extroversion fit together with research on empathy and anxiety. We also need to consider how much practical impact these issues have on face identification in applied situations – from identification by police officers to .

Our own ongoing work is looking at the impact of wider individual factors like altruism and optimism on face recognition. It may be that we soon find even more explanations for why some of us are just better at recognising faces than others.

, Senior Lecturer in Experimental Psychology, . This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Notes for editors

For further information or to request an interview with one of the authors, please contact Alison Barbuti, Media Relations Officer, The University of Manchester, 0161 275 8383 or email Alison.barbuti@manchester.ac.uk 

Scientists at The University of Manchester have uncovered how the internal mechanisms in nerve cells wire the brain. The findings open up new avenues in the investigation of neurodegenerative diseases by analysing the cellular processes underlying these conditions.

and his team at the Faculty of Life Sciences have been studying the growth of axons, the thin cable-like extensions of nerve cells that wire the brain. If axons don't develop properly this can lead to birth disorders, mental and physical impairments and the gradual decay of brain capacity during aging. 

Axon growth is directed by the hand shaped growth cone which sits in the tip of the axon. It is well documented how growth cones perceive signals from the outside to follow pathways to specific targets, but very little is known about the internal machinery that dictates their behaviour.

Dr Prokop has been studying the key driver of growth cone movements, the cytoskeleton. The cytoskeleton helps to maintain a cell's shape and is made up of the protein filaments, actin and microtubules. Microtubules are the key driving force of axon growth whilst actin helps to regulate the direction the axon grows.

Dr Prokop and his team used fruit flies to analyse how actin and microtubule proteins combine in the cytoskeleton to coordinate axon growth. They focussed on the multifunctional proteins called spectraplakins which are essential for axonal growth and have known roles in neurodegeneration and wound healing of the skin.

What the team demonstrate in this recent paper is that spectraplakins link microtubules to actin to help them extend in the direction the axon is growing. If this link is missing then microtubule networks show disorganised criss-crossed arrangements instead of parallel bundles and axon growth is hampered.

By understanding the molecular detail of these interactions the team made a second important finding. Spectraplakins collect not only at the tip of microtubules but also along the shaft, which helps to stabilise them and ensure they act as a stable structure within the axon.

This additional function of spectraplakins relates them to a class of microtubule-binding proteins including Tau. Tau is an important player in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, which is still little understood. In support of the author's findings, another publication has just shown that the human spectraplakin, Dystonin, causes neurodegeneration when affected in its linkage to microtubules.

Talking about his research Dr Prokop said: “Understanding cytoskeletal machinery at the cell level is a holy grail of current cell research that will have powerful clinical applications. Thus, cytoskeleton is crucially involved in virtually all aspects of a cell's life, including cell shape changes, cell division, cell movement, contacts and signalling between cells, and dynamic transport events within cells. Accordingly, the cytoskeleton lies at the root of many brain disorders. Therefore, deciphering the principles of cytoskeletal machinery during the fundamental process of axon growth will essentially help research into the causes of a broad spectrum of diseases. Spectraplakins like at the heart of this machinery and our research opens up new avenues for its investigation”

What Dr Prokop's paper in the Journal of Neuroscience also demonstrates is the successful research technique using the fruit fly Drosophila. The team was able to replicate its findings regarding axon growth in mice which in turn means the findings can be translated to humans.

Dr Prokop points out fruit flies provide ideal means to make sense of these findings and essentially help to unravel the many mysteries of neurodegeneration.

Dr Prokop continues: “Understanding how spectraplakins perform their cellular functions has important implications for basic as well as biomedical research. Thus, besides their roles during axon growth, spectraplakins of mice and humans are clinically important for a number of conditions and processes including skin blistering, neuro-degeneration, wound healing, synapse formation and neuron migration during brain development. Understanding spectraplakins in one biological process will instruct research on the other clinically relevant roles of these proteins.”

The recently published paper represents six years of work by Dr Prokop and his dedicated team.

Notes for editors

The paper is entitled ""

It was published on 4 July 2012 in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Images for this story are available from the press office and Dr Andreas Prokop is available for interviews.

Please contact:

Morwenna Grills
Media Relations Officer
Faculty of Life Sciences
The University of Manchester

Tel: 0161 275 2111
Mob: 07920 087466
Email: morwenna.grills@manchester.ac.uk 

University of Manchester researchers have for the first time been able to watch what happens to the brain as it loses consciousness.

Using sophisticated imaging equipment they have constructed a 3-D movie of the brain as it changes while an anaesthetic drug takes effect.

, Professor of Anaesthesia at 91ֱ�� Medical School, will tell the European Anaesthesiology Congress in Amsterdam today (Saturday) that the real-time 3-D images seemed to show that losing consciousness involves a change in electrical activity deep within the brain, changing the activity of certain groups of nerve cells (neurons) and hindering communication between different parts of the brain.

He said the findings appear to support a hypothesis put forward by Professor Susan Greenfield, of the University of Oxford, about the nature of consciousness itself. Prof Greenfield suggests consciousness is formed by different groups of brain cells (neural assemblies), which work efficiently together, or not, depending on the available sensory stimulations, and that consciousness is not an all-or-none state but more like a dimmer switch, changing according to growth, mood or drugs. When someone is anaesthetised it appears that small neural assemblies either work less well together or inhibit communication with other neural assemblies.

Professor Pollard, whose team is based at 91ֱ�� Royal Infirmary, said: “Our findings suggest that unconsciousness may be the increase of inhibitory assemblies across the brain’s cortex. These findings lend support to Greenfield’s hypothesis of neural assemblies forming consciousness.”

The team use an entirely new imaging method called “functional electrical impedance tomography by evoked response” (fEITER), which enables high-speed imaging and monitoring of electrical activity deep within the brain and is designed to enable researchers to measure brain function.

The new device was developed by a multidisciplinary team drawn from the Schools of Medicine and Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Manchester, led by Professor Hugh McCann and with support from a Wellcome Trust Translation Award.

The machine itself is a portable, light-weight monitor, which can fit on a small trolley. It has 32 electrodes that are fitted around the patient’s head. A small, high-frequency electric current (too small to be felt or have any effect) is passed between two of the electrodes, and the voltages between other pairs of electrodes are measured in a process that takes less than one-thousandth of a second.

An ‘electronic scan’ is therefore carried out and the machine does this whole procedure 100 times a second. By measuring the resistance to current flow (electrical impedance), a cross-sectional image of the changing electrical conductivity within the brain is constructed. This is thought to reflect the amount of electrical activity in different parts of the brain. The speed of the response of fEITER is such that the evoked response of the brain to external stimuli, such as an anaesthetic drug, can be captured in rapid succession as different parts of the brain respond, so tracking the brain’s processing activity.

“We have looked at 20 healthy volunteers and are now looking at 20 anaesthetised patients scheduled for surgery,” said Professor Pollard. “We are able to see 3-D images of the brain’s conductivity change, and those where the patient is becoming anaesthetised are most interesting.

“We have been able to see a real time loss of consciousness in anatomically distinct regions of the brain for the first time. We are currently working on trying to interpret the changes that we have observed, as we still do not know exactly what happens within the brain as unconsciousness occurs, but this is another step in the direction of understanding the brain and its functions.”

The team at 91ֱ�� is one of many worldwide investigating electrical impedance tomography (EIT), but this is its first application to anaesthesia. Professor Pollard said that a huge amount of research still needed to be done to fully understand the role EIT could play in medicine.

“If its power can be harnessed, then it has the potential to make a huge impact on many areas of imaging in medicine,” he said. “It should help us to better understand anaesthesia, sedation and unconsciousness, although its place in medicine is more likely to be in diagnosing changes to the brain that occur as a result of, for example, head injury, stroke and dementia.

“The biggest hurdle is working out what we are seeing and exactly what it means, and this will be an ongoing challenge.”

Ends

Notes for editors

Professor Pollard’s presentation at the European Anaesthesiology Congress will take place on Saturday, June 11, at 15:15 hrs (CEST), abstract no: 7AP1-6.

fEITER was invented at The University of Manchester and developed with funding from The Wellcome Trust (from 2005 to 2011). fEITER has patent protection in Europe with patents pending in the USA. The technology is available to license from UMIP, The University of Manchester’s IP commercialisation company.  

Pictures of the images produced by fEITER are available for journalists to use.

Euroanaesthesia 2011, the European Anaesthesiology Congress, is taking place from June 11-14 at the Amsterdam RAI Convention Centre (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). A total of 847 abstracts will be presented at the Congress, and 5,500-6,000 delegates from more than 90 countries around the world will be attending.

For further information contact:

Emma Mason

Tel: 01376 563090
Mob: 07711 296 986
Email: wordmason@mac.com

Or Aeron Haworth
Media Relations
Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences
The University of Manchester

Tel: 0161 275 8383
Mob: 07717 881563
Email: aeron.haworth@manchester.ac.uk

Scientists from The University of Manchester recruited individuals into the study who had a diverse range of experience with meditation, spanning anything from months to decades. It was only the more advanced meditators whose anticipation and experience of pain differed from non-meditators.

The type of meditation practised also varied across individuals, but all included ‘mindfulness meditation’ practices, such as those that form the basis of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), recommended for recurrent depression by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in 2004.

“Meditation is becoming increasingly popular as a way to treat chronic illness such as the pain caused by arthritis,” said Dr Christopher Brown, who conducted the research. “Recently, a mental health charity called for meditation to be routinely available on the NHS to treat depression, which occurs in up to 50% of people with chronic pain. However, scientists have only just started to look into how meditation might reduce the emotional impact of pain.”

The study, to be published in the journal Pain, found that particular areas of the brain were less active as meditators anticipated pain, as induced by a laser device. Those with longer meditation experience (up to 35 years) showed the least anticipation of the laser pain.

Dr Brown, who is based in 91ֱ��’s School of Translational Medicine, found that people who meditate also showed unusual activity during anticipation of pain in part of the prefrontal cortex, a brain region known to be involved in controlling attention and thought processes when potential threats are perceived.

He said: "The results of the study confirm how we suspected meditation might affect the brain. Meditation trains the brain to be more present-focused and therefore to spend less time anticipating future negative events. This may be why meditation is effective at reducing the recurrence of depression, which makes chronic pain considerably worse.”

Dr Brown said the findings should encourage further research into how the brain is changed by meditation practice. He said: “Although we found that meditators anticipate pain less and find pain less unpleasant, it’s not clear precisely how meditation changes brain function over time to produce these effects.

“However, the importance of developing new treatments for chronic pain is clear: 40% of people who suffer from chronic pain report inadequate management of their pain problem.”

In the UK, more than 10 million adults consult their GP each year with arthritis and related conditions. The estimated annual direct cost of these conditions to health and social services is £5.7 billion.

91ֱ�� co-author said: “One might argue that if a therapy works, then why should we care how it works? But it may be surprising to learn that the mechanisms of action of many current therapies are largely unknown, a fact that hinders the development of new treatments. Understanding how meditation works would help improve this method of treatment and help in the development of new therapies.

“There may also be some types of patient with chronic pain who benefit more from meditation-based therapies than others. If we can find out the mechanism of action of meditation for reducing pain, we may be able to screen patients in the future for deficiencies in that mechanism, allowing us to target the treatment to those people.”

The paper, '', was published in the journal Pain. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2010.04.017

Ends

Notes for editors

For further information contact:

Aeron Haworth
Media Relations
Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences
The University of Manchester

Tel: 0161 275 8383
Mob: 07717 881 563
Email: aeron.haworth@manchester.ac.uk

University of Manchester scientists, in collaboration with colleagues from other European centres, have shown that higher levels of vitamin D – primarily synthesised in the skin following sun exposure but also found in certain foods such as oily fish – are associated with improved cognitive function in middle-aged and older men.

The study, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, compared the cognitive performance of more than 3,000 men aged 40 to 79 years at eight test centres across Europe.

The researchers found that men with higher levels of vitamin D performed consistently better in a simple and sensitive neuropsychological test that assesses an individual’s attention and speed of information processing.

“Previous studies exploring the relationship between vitamin D and cognitive performance in adults have produced inconsistent findings but we observed a significant, independent association between a slower information processing speed and lower levels of vitamin D,” said lead author Dr David Lee, in 91ֱ��’s School of Translational Medicine.

“The main strengths of our study are that it is based on a large population sample and took into account potential interfering factors, such as depression, season and levels of physical activity.

“Interestingly, the association between increased vitamin D and faster information processing was more significant in men aged over 60 years, although the biological reasons for this remain unclear.”

“The positive effects vitamin D appears to have on the brain need to be explored further but certainly raise questions about its potential benefit for minimising ageing-related declines in cognitive performance.”

Ends

Notes for editors

The eight centres testing volunteers for the study are all enrolled in the European Male Ageing 91ֱ�� (EMAS) and are located in Florence (Italy), Leuven (Belgium), Lodz (Poland), Malmö (Sweden), 91ֱ�� (UK), Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Szeged (Hungary) and Tartu (Estonia).

EMAS is funded by the Commission of the European Communities Fifth Framework Programme.

For further information contact:

Aeron Haworth
Media Officer
Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences
The University of Manchester

Tel: +44 (0)161 275 8383
Mob: +44 (0)7717 881563
Email: aeron.haworth@manchester.ac.uk

A £39M research centre that will make 91ֱ�� home to one of the largest biomedical complexes in Europe will be officially opened today (May 7th).

will house 300 scientists in 50 research groups, mainly focussing on neuroscience and immunology, from the University of Manchester's Faculty of Life Sciences and Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences.

The 6000 sq metre facility connects the Core Technology Facility, Michael Smith and Stopford Buildings, thus creating a linked complex housing more than 300 research groups. The complex is adjacent to the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility and the Central 91ֱ�� and 91ֱ�� Children’s University Hospitals NHS Trust and is therefore sited at a focal point in the University's 'biomedical corridor'.

The building is named after , who won in Physiology or Medicine while he held the Chair in Physiology at the University of Manchester. Professor Hill shared the 1922 Nobel Prize with Otto Fritz Meyerhof for work on the generation of heat by muscles.

One of the pioneering physiologists of the 20th Century, AV Hill made outstanding contributions in the field of muscle physiology and was regarded as one of the founders of Biophysics. In the 1930s he played a leading role in the establishment of the Academic Assistance Council (AAC), later to be known as the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL), which rescued many German refugee academics from Nazi persecution and provided employment and financial support. During the Second World War, he accepted an invitation to stand for Parliament representing Cambridge University, and used his considerable influence in support of many worthy causes.

AV Hill's grandson Nicholas Humphrey, a Professor at the London School of Economics, Dr Ralph Kohn, a University of Manchester alumnus and winner of the Queen's Award for Export Achievement who founded the Kohn Foundation, will officially open the building. A replica of AV Hill’s Nobel Prize medal, kindly provided by Blundell’s School, which he attended, will be on display at the opening.

Professor Humphrey said: “My grandfather loved laboratories. But he could never have imagined a lab of this magnificence!”

Dr Kohn said: “I am deeply honoured to officially open the building named after such a great man as AV Hill, who was an outstanding physiologist, humanitarian and parliamentarian, together with his grandson Professor Nicholas Humphrey.”

The Deans of FLS and FMHS Professor Martin Humphries and Professor Alan North said: “This facility will further enhance the major programme of biomedical research established in 91ֱ�� over the past ten years.

“The operations group behind its design spent eighteen months considering not only how this building will operate, but also how the 'biomedical corridor' – incorporating the teaching hospitals – can be better integrated. Benefits include the clustering of core equipment, easily accessible resources for researchers and enhanced opportunities for collaboration.”

The building houses a number of internationally-recognised groups examining novel approaches for treatment of human disease. For example neuroscience research group which is investigating the causes and possible prevention of brain damage from stroke. The researchers have found that if the immune system has been stimulated by infection, it can attack the brain following a stroke. This has important implications for the elderly who are most at risk of stroke and frequently suffer from infection and other conditions, such as atherosclerosis, that stimulate the immune system. The team believe their findings could change the way stroke patients are treated in the future. For example, anti-inflammatory drugs that are currently being tested in human trials may be able to dampen the activated immune system and so reduce brain damage.

immunology research group have discovered how parasitic worms subvert the host's immune system to allow them to survive. One in five people in the developing world (1,000 million) suffer from parasitic worm infection, which results in anaemia, tiredness and general morbidity. Dr Else's group is now trying to identify the molecules made by the worms which allow them to subvert the host's immune system.

And recent arrival is researching human developmental biology and stem cells with the aim of understanding the process so that it can be re-enacted in regenerative medicine, specifically to help diabetes sufferers.

Notes for editors

The official opening of the AV Hill Building will take place at 5pm on Thursday 7th May.

The AV Hill Building represents an investment by the University of 

£39M and includes £11.6M from SRIF. The delivery of this four-year project was overseen by the Directorate of Estates and the building was designed by Wilson Mason. The project sponsors were Andrew Loudon and Julian Davis and client group Simon Merrywest, Gary Porteous and Louise Hewitt. The stunning complex recently won the Best Corporate Workplace in the North regional heat of the British Council for Offices awards and will compete in the final in October.

High-resolution images of the building are available - photographer Oliver Foxley must be credited.

For more information, photographs or to arrange an interview with 

Professor Martin Humphries, Professor Alan North, Dr Ralph Kohn or Professor Nicholas Humphrey contact Media Relations Officer Mikaela Sitford on 0161 275

2111, 07768 980942 or Mikaela.Sitford@manchester.ac.uk.