Face

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search
For other uses, see Face (disambiguation).
"Faces" redirects here. For other uses, see Faces (disambiguation).

Face

Ventrolateral aspect of the face with skin removed, showing muscles

of the face.

Details

Identifiers

Latin Facies, facia

MeSH D005145

TA A01.1.00.006

FMA 24728

Anatomical terminology

[edit on Wikidata]
The face is the front of an animal's head that features three of the head's sense organs, the eyes,
nose, and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions.[1][2] The face is crucial
for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities affects the psyche
adversely.[1]

Contents

 1Structure
o 1.1Shape
 2Function
o 2.1Emotion
o 2.2Perception and recognition of faces
 2.2.1Biological perspective
 3Society and culture
o 3.1Facial surgery
o 3.2Caricatures
o 3.3Metaphor
 4See also
 5References

Structure
The front of the human head is called the face. It includes several distinct areas,[3] of which the main
features are:

 The forehead, comprising the skin beneath the hairline, bordered

laterally by the temples and inferiorly by eyebrows and ears
 The eyes, sitting in the orbit and protected by eyelids and eyelashes
 The distinctive human nose shape, nostrils, and nasal septum
 The cheeks, covering the maxilla and mandibula (or jaw), the
extremity of which is the chin
 The mouth, with the upper lip divided by the philtrum, sometimes
revealing the teeth
Facial appearance is vital for human recognition and communication. Facial muscles in humans
allow expression of emotions.
The face is itself a highly sensitive region of the human body and its expression may change when
the brain is stimulated by any of the many human senses, such
as touch, temperature, smell, taste, hearing, movement, hunger, or visual stimuli.[4]
Shape
The nasal cartilages are important in defining the shape of the nose.

The muscles of the face are important when engaging in facial expressions.

Skeletal anatomy of the face

The face is the feature which best distinguishes a person. Specialized regions of the human brain,
such as the fusiform face area (FFA), enable facial recognition; when these are damaged, it may be
impossible to recognize faces even of intimate family members. The pattern of specific organs, such
as the eyes, or of parts of them, is used in biometric identification to uniquely identify individuals.
The shape of the face is influenced by the bone-structure of the skull, and each face is unique
through the anatomical variation present in the bones of
the viscerocranium (and neurocranium).[1] The bones involved in shaping the face are mainly
the maxilla, mandible, nasal bone and zygomatic bone. Also important are various soft tissues, such
as fat, hair and skin (of which color may vary).[1]
The face changes over time, and features common in children or babies, such as prominent buccal
fat-pads disappear over time, their role in the infant being to stabilize the cheeks during suckling.
While the buccal fat-pads often diminish in size, the prominence of bones increase with age as they
grow and develop.[1]
Facial shape is an important determinant of beauty, particularly facial symmetry.

Human face development, by Haeckel

Various face profiles as caricatures, by William Hogarth

A man's face
A woman's face

Function
Emotion
Faces are essential to expressing emotion, consciously or unconsciously. A frown denotes
disapproval; a smile usually means someone is pleased. Being able to read emotion in another's
face is "the fundamental basis for empathy and the ability to interpret a person’s reactions and
predict the probability of ensuing behaviors". One study used the Multimodal Emotion Recognition
Test[5] to attempt to determine how to measure emotion. This research aimed at using a measuring
device to accomplish what people do so easily everyday: read emotion in a face.[6]
The muscles of the face play a prominent role in the expression of emotion,[1] and vary among
different individuals, giving rise to additional diversity in expression and facial features.[7]

Variations of the risorius, triangularis and zygomaticus muscles.

Peopl