It is not always very easy to understand the emotions of others, but just when it seems really difficult, the muscles of our face intervene: a study ofUniversity of Parma and of theUniversity of Padua has shown that it is they who help us understand what the person in front of us is feeling, especially when a face is difficult to read. The work makes us reflect, once again, on the relationship between mind and body.
Two opposing theories
As the researchers explain, cognitive neuroscience has been trying for a long time to understand how our brain is able to grasp the nuances and decipher the emotion painted on the faces of others. According to some hypotheses, the brain would “limit itself” to comparing faces with visual models that it has learned to memorize, in a sort of comparative analysis.
Other theories instead maintain that sight alone is not enough and that the brain also involves the motor systems, the same ones with which we express our feelings on the face: in practice it is as if, to understand what the person in front of us is feeling, we made an “invisible” attempt to imitate their facial movements.
How the study was conducted and what it showed
The scientists actually conducted three studies that integrated prototypical and non-prototypical dynamic expressions, congenital facial paralysis (Moebius syndrome) and acquired and used a standardized severity classification (Sunnybrook Facial Grading System; SFGS), involving a total of 185 participants.
The key to the study proved to be the participation of individuals suffering from facial paralysis, a condition characterized by partial or total loss of the ability to move the muscles of the face. In fact, people affected by this syndrome have a reduced, and in some cases zero, ability to move their face without having to resort to artificial alterations.
©PNAS
Compare people paralyzed since birth, such as those affected by the syndrome Moebiuswith those who developed paralysis later in life allows us to isolate the fundamental role of motor experiences.
The results show that the contribution of the sensorimotor systems of the face – the signals sent to the brain that unite the senses and actual muscular movement – becomes particularly important when faced with ambiguous expressions – the scientists explain – a fact that reconciles the two theoretical perspectives and establishes a new conceptual approach to how we recognize the emotions of others
In other words, our body participates, silently, every time a face becomes difficult to read.
A study that opens the doors to new questions (and makes you think)
Understanding what another person feels is not an activity for spectators: our body participates, silently, every time a face becomes difficult to read – he specifies – underlines Paola Sessa, who coordinated the work – And it doesn’t just concern those who live with paralysis. In our data, it was enough to temporarily limit the facial movements of healthy volunteers for the reading of the most ambiguous expressions to falter. This study does not close a discussion: it opens questions that are finally precise. Can facial movement rehabilitation also support the understanding of others? And how important are the face-to-face interactions of the first months – the faces looked at, imitated, reciprocated – in building the mental archive of expressions, within what is probably a critical window of development? These are our next steps, to be taken together with clinicians, patients and families
The study really makes us reflect a lot, scientifically, on the mind-body relationship, which is perhaps much more complex than we think.
The work was carried out thanks to the contribution of Cariparo Foundationand was published on Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).
Sources: University of Padua / PNAS
