Just a few seconds, that's the time it takes babies to recognize their mother's face. This is supported by a study published in the journal Cortex, conducted with pediatric encephalograms capable of monitoring and recording the brain activity of 39 infants as young as five months.
Some studies have shown how adults, especially so-called superphysiognomists, are able to quickly identify among many unfamiliar faces those of people they have seen even just by piecing together some facial details like a puzzle.
However, this increased ability that develops over the years appears to be partly innate. Already a 2017 study, starting from the fact that vision already develops in the womb thanks to exposure to light during pregnancy, tested the visual abilities of the unborn to recognize faces. Another 2018 study then showed that even newborns have a remarkable ability to detect faces within minutes of birth, a basic ability to interact with their relatives.
For the new study, 39 five-month-old infants were quickly presented with images of several unfamiliar female faces repeatedly interspersed with the mother's face called the target because it was the face the infant needed to recognize. For the experiment, the researchers chose five-month-old babies because previous studies had shown that they were able to recognize faces at this age, although in those studies the babies were shown for a longer time.
The results showed that babies are able to identify their mother's face even when looking at her at different angles and facial expressions and with exposures as short as 1/6 of a second—practically the duration of a lightning bolt. However, the researchers found that infants found the mother's target more easily when the mother's face was presented frequently rather than mixed in with many unfamiliar faces.
In short, not only do newborns recognize their mother by smell and voice, which can help even premature babies cope with the pain of life-saving treatments, but by just a few months they know it's her. even with a single glance of love.