Expressing fear enhances perception
Nature Neuroscience
June 16, 2008
Are emotional facial expressions such as fear or disgust created by chance? A study published online this week in Nature Neuroscience provides evidence for the suggestion, first made by Charles Darwin, that emotional facial expressions have not evolved randomly, but that they serve to alter sensory experience.
Joshua Susskind and colleagues found that when people pose expressions of fear, they have a subjectively larger range of vision, faster eye movements, and an increase in nasal volume and air velocity during breathing in. While posing fear expressions, people were also able to detect targets which were further away. Expressions of disgust, which are objectively opposite to fear, produced opposite results, with people reporting a subjectively smaller range of vision and a decrease in nasal volume.
These results suggest that fear works to enhance perception of external information, whereas disgust decreases perception.
doi: 10.1038/nn.2138
Research highlights
-
Aug 12
Ageing: Mutations in the ageing human heart identifiedNature Aging
-
Aug 12
Palaeontology: T. rex and relatives traded big eyes for bigger bitesCommunications Biology
-
Aug 10
Epidemiology: Estimating the risk of SARS-related coronaviruses from bats in Southeast AsiaNature Communications
-
Aug 5
Microbiology: Single switch makes Escherichia coli beneficial insect partnerNature Microbiology
-
Aug 5
Conservation: More than half of unassessable species may be at risk of extinctionCommunications Biology
-
Aug 4
Physiology: Restoring cellular functions in pigs after deathNature