We're Good At Recognizing Distorted Faces

A new paper from MIT neuroscientists Sharon Gilad-Gutnick and colleagues reveals that we are remarkably good at recognizing faces even if they are highly distorted. Not only is this scientifically interesting, the deformed images used in this study are rather hilarious. Here's an example of a face being distorted by horizontal and vertical compression (also known as thinning and flattening). The unfortunate victim of these distortions is Bill Clinton: