What's amazing to me is how the brain compresses knowledge into
   simple patterns then explodes into specificity. So a :)* is a
   face. That :) activates the SAME type of reaction but I bet
   there will be a *little less* complexity because the smile
   emoticon is about as compressed a "face" form our brain can
   handle and recognize as a face still. But a regular human face?
   Oh, so much more matching... although I don't think it's
   matching so much as inhibiting: An [All Faces] set hits almost
   at once, and what's 'left over' is a [least unlikely] set...
   which is why someone can look familiar yet you still don't know
   who.