We are born to seek other people's faces. Babies less than 10 minutes old prefer a picture of a human face to other images. People can't resist seeing faces on tree trunks, cloud formations, pieces of toast.

What makes faces so captivating is that they remind us that we share the ...

We recognise people's faces instantly and without effort. We can recognise someone we know from a childhood photo. Although no one knows how this skill works, it seems to involve making a rough calculation about how the face fits together as a whole rather than comparing individual elements.

Some people suffer from prosopagnosia - or face blindness - which affects about 2% of the population.

Prosopagnosiacs can't identify people from their faces. They will carefully scan faces for details like moles, skew teeth and monobrows. When they view a face from an odd ...

Now that the world is reopening once more and filling with real faces, not hidden behind masks or on screens, we hold their gaze for slightly longer, perhaps because eye contact feels like a new privilege. We are aware of how quickly the world can change.

When people are conversing online,...