Study: Botox affects emotions

[Ed Barrow]

Source: UPI

U.S. psychology professors say they've discovered people who have undergone Botox treatments might experience weaker emotions.

Barnard College Professors Joshua Davis and Ann Senghas, who led the research, noted Botox users are often ridiculed for having stiff faces that appear unable to express emotions. But Davis and Senghas said their findings suggest facial expressions themselves might influence emotional experiences. In other words, they said Botox not only changes one's appearance, it also affects real emotions.

"With the advent of Botox, it is now possible to work with people who have a temporary, reversible paralysis in muscles that are involved in facial expressions," Davis said. "The muscle paralysis allows us to isolate the effects of facial expression and the subsequent sensory feedback to the brain that would follow from other factors, such as intentions relating to one's expressions and motor commands to make an expression.

"With Botox, a person can respond otherwise normally to an emotional event, e.g. a sad movie scene, but will have less movement in the facial muscles that have been injected, and therefore less feedback to the brain about such facial expressivity," he added. "It thus allows for a test of whether facial expressions and the sensory feedback from them to the brain can influence our emotions."


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/06/16/Study-Botox-affects-emotions/UPI-62371276721500/

[nolabear]

1. When asked her opinion on the matter, Joan Rivers replied "Meh."

[DesertFlower]

2. i've been getting botox

in my forehead for about 8 years. what can i say? i cry easily. do you think botox has had that effect? lol

there's nothing stiff about my face.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

3. I've heard psychologists suggest that smiling, even if fake,

can lift the spirits.

[DesertFlower]

4. i've heard that too.

[boppers]

5. Mirror neurons and emotions,

In a normal human emotional interaction, we see pain, reflect pain ourselves, the pained reflect it back, we reflect to them, etc.

Botox short circuits the whole system.

Simple thought experiment:
1. Child feels pain, contorts face.
2. Mother recognizes pain, contorts face.
3. Child recognizes mother's feeling, and is soothed, and relaxes face.
4. Mother recognizes child's feeling, and is soothed, and relaxes face.
5. Child and mother feel empathy to each other, and share feeling.

Now, with Botox!:
1. Child feels pain, contorts face.
2. Mother recognizes pain, cannot move face.
3. Child cannot recognize mother's feeling, and continues.
4. Mother recognizes child's feeling, still cannot move face.
5. Child and mother do not connect, and do not share the symbiotic moment.