People don’t like it when we put on a sad face, even if we have a good reason – whether it’s because we’re having a big fight with our partner or because we stepped in dog poop. But whatever the reason, things often get worse when a random stranger tells you to put on a happy face.
People can tell what we are thinking or feeling by our facial expressions. This is mind reading with our face. This is actually a useful form of communication, which is not surprising since an amazing variety of different brain processes are dedicated to communicating with our fellow humans.
You may have heard it said that 90 percent of communication is nonverbal. The percentage varies greatly depending on who says it. In reality, it varies because people communicate in different contexts and in different ways. People trying to communicate in a crowded nightclub will use different methods than they would if they were locked in a cage with a (for now) sleeping tiger. But the point is that much, if not most, of our interpersonal communication is accomplished by means other than spoken words.
Several of our brain areas are involved in the production of language and speech, which in itself makes the importance of verbal communication clear. For many years, the production and comprehension of language was associated with two regions: Broca’s area and Wernecke’s area.
- Broca’s area, located at the back of the frontal lobe, is responsible for language production, converting thoughts into words and putting them in the right order
- Wernicke’s area is located in the temporal lobe and is responsible for language comprehension, i.e., understanding the meaning or possible meanings of words
These are the two main players, but there are many other areas involved in language production and comprehension. However, to explain this in all its complexity here would be too far-reaching and confusing. Both areas, Broca’s and Wernicke’s, were discovered in the 19th century in people who had suffered damage to one of them. Since neuroscientists at that time did not have the modern technological tools we have today, they had to make do with the fact that there were people who had just the right kind of head injury.
Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas were discovered because their damage or injury causes aphasia, a profound disorder. Broca’s aphasia is synonymous with the inability to produce speech. The mouth or tongue is not affected, and patients can still understand speech, but they are no longer able to produce fluent, coherent verbal communication. They may still be able to produce a few relevant words, but it is virtually impossible for them to form long, complex sentences.
Interestingly, this type of aphasia affects both speaking and writing. This is important. Speaking is done with the help of acoustic articulation, the necessary tool is the mouth; writing is a visual way of communication, you use hands and fingers. If both are affected, it means that a common element must be affected. This can only be speech production, which is therefore operated separately by the brain.
In Wernicke’s aphasia, the problem is basically the opposite. People with this condition seem to be unable to understand language. They seem to perceive sound, tone, intonation, and so on, but the words themselves have no meaning to them. And they speak in a similar way. They formulate long, complex-sounding sentences, but instead of saying something like, “I went to the supermarket today and bought a fresh loaf of bread,” they say something like, “I was in the store and there was a woman standing behind a table with a display and she had bread. So I took one.” They produce complex sentences that make sense, but you can’t understand what they really said and why. This aphasia often affects written language as well, and people with aphasia usually do not realize that something is wrong with the way they express themselves. They believe they are articulating normally, and this naturally causes great frustration.
Both types of aphasia, either motor or sensory in nature, gave rise to the theory of the importance of Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. However, the ability to study brain activity with modern imaging techniques has led to a rethink. Broca’s area is indeed responsible for syntax and other structural aspects, which makes sense: Much of the activity in the frontal lobe is for processing complex information in real time. Wernicke’s area, on the other hand, has been downgraded in importance. Recent research shows that regions of the frontal lobe in a larger radius around this area are responsible for understanding language.
Overall, areas such as the superior temporal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and middle temporal gyrus, as well as deeper brain structures such as the putamen, are heavily involved in the production and comprehension of language. They are responsible for elements such as sentence structure, semantic meaning of words, retrieval of related expressions, and expressions stored in memory. Many of them are located near the auditory cortex, which processes sound, which seems to make sense. Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area may not be as important to our verbal communication as originally thought, but they certainly play a role. Damage to them can disrupt the many connections between regions that are essential to our ability to use language to communicate – and that triggers one of two types of aphasia. But the fact that the language centers as a whole are so widely distributed shows that producing language, or making language possible, is one of the basic functions of the brain. It is not something we simply pick up from our environment by observation or imitation.
Neurologically, language is even more important. According to the theory of linguistic relativity, a person’s linguistic expressiveness underlies his or her cognitive capacity and ability to experience the world. For example, if someone were to learn a language that had no expressions for trustworthy or sincere, they would not be able to understand the meaning of those terms or exhibit those qualities themselves – so they would have to make a living as something else, such as a real estate agent.
This is clearly an extreme example, and it will be difficult to find a culture whose language lacks words for important ideas. Nevertheless, there are many theories about linguistic relativity. Some scientists go further and claim that when the language someone uses changes, so does their way of thinking. The best known example of consciously inducing such a change is something called Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). A hybrid of psychotherapy, personal development, and other behavioral approaches, NLP is based on the premise that language, behavior, and neurological processes are all intertwined. By changing a person’s specific use and experience of language, you can change their thinking and behavior (for the better, of course). It’s like changing the code of a computer program to eliminate bugs and shortcomings.
While NLP is popular and enticing, there is little evidence that it actually works, and it is generally relegated to the realm of pseudoscience and alternative medicine. This book is full of examples of how the human brain will go its own way, no matter how much the modern world rains down on it. It is therefore unlikely to yield to a carefully crafted expression, i.e. to be positively influenced.
In his groundbreaking 1985 book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks describes a group of aphasic patients who, unable to understand spoken language, watch a speech by the President of the United States and find it hilarious – which, of course, it should not be. The explanation is that patients who have lost the ability to understand words have become very adept at reading the non-verbal signs and cues that most people miss because they are distracted by the spoken words. To them, things like facial twitches, body language, the rhythm of his speech, rehearsed gestures, and so on, provide constant clues that the president is deceiving his audience. To an aphasic person, all these things signal insincerity, and when the most powerful man in the world sends these signals, you either have to cry – or laugh.
That such information can be conveyed non-verbally is not surprising. As mentioned earlier, the human face is an excellent medium of communication or understanding. The expression of a face reveals whether its owner is angry, happy, fearful, etc., and this contributes greatly to interpersonal communication. When someone says, “You shouldn’t have done that,” this phrase can take on a completely different meaning depending on whether the speaker is making a happy, angry, or disgusted face.
Our facial expressions are universal, which means they can be understood everywhere. Studies have been done in which pictures of faces with a particular expression were presented to members of different cultures, some of which have been largely untouched by Western civilization because of their remoteness. There is a slight cultural variation, but overall, everyone is able to interpret a facial expression, no matter where they come from. It seems that our facial expressions are innate, not learned. The different “grimaces” are hardwired into our brains. Someone who grew up in a remote part of the Amazon jungle would contort his face in the same way when something surprised him as someone who spent his entire life in the urban jungle of New York City.
Our brains are very adept at reading other people’s faces and interpreting their facial expressions
The visual cortex has subsections dedicated to recognizing faces. That’s why we see them everywhere. The brain is so efficient at this that it can infer facial expressions from minimal information. This is why we can tell whether we are happy, sad, angry, surprised, and so on with the help of a few punctuation marks: :-), :-(, >:-, :-O. These are just simple dots, strokes, and lines, and they are not always arranged vertically. Nevertheless, we recognize a certain expression in each of these formations.
Communication through facial expressions may seem limited, but it is extremely useful. When horror is reflected in the faces of everyone around you, your brain instantly concludes that there is great danger from something nearby and prepares you for fight or flight. If we had to rely on someone to say, “I don’t want to alarm you, but there seems to be a pack of rabid hyenas coming right at us over there,” the critters would probably have us on our heels before the sentence was even out. Facial expressions are also useful for social interaction. If we are doing something and everyone is making a happy face, we know that we should continue to do it to gain the approval of others. On the other hand, if everyone looks at us and seems shocked, annoyed, disgusted, or all of the above at the same time, we better stop what we are doing quickly. So this kind of feedback helps us determine our own behavior.
Research has shown that the amygdala is highly active when we read the faces of others. The amygdala, which is responsible for forming our own emotions, also appears to be crucial for recognizing the emotions of others. Other regions deep in the limbic system that are responsible for generating certain emotions (such as the putamen for disgust) are also involved.
The connection between facial expression and emotional mood is strong, but not inextricable. Some people can control or influence their facial expressions so that they reveal nothing about their mood. The most famous example of this is the “poker face. When professional poker players are dealt their cards, they manage to put on a meaningless (or nonmeaningful) expression to hide their chances of winning. When you’re dealt five cards from a deck of only fifty-two, the number of possible combinations is limited, and a die-hard player can mentally prepare for all of them – including an unbeatable straight flush. Knowing that something is coming allows for more conscious control of facial expressions. But if a meteorite crashed through the roof and landed on the table during the game, I don’t think any of the players would be able not to make a startled face.
This points to another conflict between the more developed and primitive regions of the brain. A facial expression can be conscious (controlled by the motor cortex in the cerebrum) or unconscious (controlled by the deeper regions of the limbic system). We can consciously choose to “make a certain face,” such as looking enthusiastic when we look at someone’s supposedly boring vacation photos. An authentic expression, i.e. one that arises unintentionally, goes back to actually felt emotions. The highly developed human neocortex may be able to convey inaccurate information (a process also known as lying), but the older limbic control system is always sincere. Because social norms often dictate that we don’t express our honest opinions, these two areas often come into conflict: if we think someone’s new haircut is ugly, we don’t say so because it’s “not done.
Unfortunately, because our brains are so sensitive to facial expressions and so good at interpreting them, we often notice when sincerity and decency are struggling in another person (when they force themselves to smile, for example). Fortunately, society has also decreed that it’s rude to “say that to someone’s face.