Face

The face is the front of an animal's head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may affect the psyche adversely. The front of the human head is called the face. It includes several distinct areas, of which the main features are: The forehead, comprising the skin beneath the hairline, bordered laterally by the temples and inferiorly by eyebrows and ears The eyes, sitting in the orbit and protected by eyelids and eyelashes The distinctive human nose shape, nostrils, and nasal septum The cheeks, covering the maxilla and mandibula (or jaw), the extremity of which is the chin The mouth, with the upper lip divided by the philtrum, sometimes revealing the teeth Facial appearance is vital for human recognition and communication. Facial muscles in humans allow expression of emotions. The face is itself a highly sensitive region of the human body and its expression may change when the brain is stimulated by any of the many human senses, such as touch, temperature, smell, taste, hearing, movement, hunger, or visual stimuli. Human variability The face is the feature which best distinguishes a person. Specialized regions of the human brain, such as the fusiform face area (FFA), enable facial recognition; when these are damaged, it may be impossible to recognize faces even of intimate family members. The pattern of specific organs, such as the eyes, or of parts of them, is used in biometric identification to uniquely identify individuals. The shape of the face is influenced by the bone-structure of the skull, and each face is unique through the anatomical variation present in the bones of the viscerocranium (and neurocranium). The bones involved in shaping the face are mainly the maxilla, mandible, nasal bone and zygomatic bone. Also important are various soft tissues, such as fat, hair and skin (of which color may vary).