"That's Disgusting! I Can Tell from Your Face "

[emad]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - You don't need to actually see or smell something unpleasant to know it is disgusting -- you only need to look at someone else's expression, according to research published on Wednesday. The brain responds the same whether a person actually experiences something disgusting, or just sees another person reacting, Italian researchers found.

Writing in the October 30th issue of the journal Neuron, they said they saw the same brain activity in people who smelled a foul odor and in those looking at someone else smelling a foul odor. Dr. Giacomo Rizzolatti of the University of Parma, Italy, and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to watch brain activity "live."

The insula and the cingulate cortex areas of the brain were most active in both groups, they reported. "The present findings indicate that seeing someone else's facial expressions triggers the neural activity typical of our own experience of the same emotion," they wrote. The same may be true of other emotional reactions, they said.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=0RTDKIX2YQUR0CRBAEZSFEY?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=3722661

Same applies to Chimpy's face, I guess. One look at him and you know it stinks...