A list of curious facts

One: In 1972, Swedish model Lena Forsén posed naked for Playboy. By a porn magazine’s standards, it was pretty unremarkable. But it soon gained notoriety in an entirely unrelated field: engineering.  

A researcher—Alexander Sawchuk—digitised Forsén’s photograph—to test a scanner he was developing for press agencies. The scanner could only scan five inches of the image—mercifully cropping it at her bare shoulder (see lead image). Soon this vanilla version became a standard reference image in the image tech industry: “The image… was reportedly ideal for testing image processing systems in the early years of digital image technology due to its high contrast and varied detail.”  

But, but, but: Women scientists were unhappy with the use of a photo that objectified women—and made them feel uncomfortable in the workplace. In 1996, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) director blithely said: “The Lena image is a picture of an attractive woman. It is not surprising that the [mostly male] image processing research community gravitated toward an image that they found attractive.” But journals like Nature did not ban the use of the Lenna image in paper submissions until 2018. And the IEEE finally followed suit last month. You can see the iconic image above. (The Guardian)

Two: Human beings most vividly remember events that occurred between the ages of 15 and 25—or some say 11 and 30. In any case, these are mostly the wretched/glorious “no-man’s-land between childhood and stable adulthood.”

Scientists call this the “reminiscence bump”—because that’s the shape it takes when memories over a person’s life are plotted on a curve. Like so:

Scientists don’t know the reason for this neurological preference. One possible explanation is that this is a period of firsts (kiss, leaving home, job etc). Another is that the bump is that these memories shape our sense of self—“who we are for the rest of our lives”: 

[T]he reason people remember more from that critical time in their lives is indeed because it is when their identities are forming. Things we encounter that are not relevant to our identity are simply forgotten. Our tastes and exposure to events, information and media in this time period defines us for the rest of our lives… 

The authors of this research explain their theory in The Conversation—while Slate has more on this phenomenon.

Three: Here’s something straight out of a horror movie. A rare brain condition called Prosopometamorphopsia or PMO makes human faces look demonic. Here’s how one patient describes it:

“I just woke up and was sitting on the couch watching TV when my roommate came into the room, and (looking at him) I’m like, ‘What am I seeing?’ Then his girlfriend walked in and her face was the same,” Sharrah told CNN.

 

Each of the once-familiar faces had a grotesque grimace, elongated eyes and deeply etched scars. When turned to the side, pointy ears suddenly appeared, he said, much like those of Spock, the Vulcan first officer on the USS Enterprise in Star Trek.

Here’s a visual representation of what he likely saw:

People can develop PMO after brain injury, seizures such as in epilepsy, PTSD, or due to a tumour or infection. In some cases, it affects the reflection of the person–where their “faces morph into dragons or fish heads, or ears pop out of the top of people’s heads.” Mercifully, there are only around 81 people around the world who have this condition. 

We still don’t have a surefire treatment for this disease, but wearing green-tinted lenses or glasses seems to help. CNN has more on the research. You can also check out this website for more information on the condition.