Microexpression

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The term microexpression denotes a brief facial expression that lasts less than a quarter of a second. They often occur involuntarily, and can reveal emotions not deliberately expressed.

1 Background
2 Masking
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Background

In the 1960s, William Condon pioneered the study of interactions at the fraction-of-a-second level. In his most^{[verification needed]} famous research project, he scrutinized a four-and-a-half-second film segment frame by frame, where each frame represented 1/45th second. After studying this film segment for a year and a half, he discerned interactional “micromovements”, such as the wife moving her shoulder exactly as the husband's hands came up, which combined yielded “microrhythms”.

American psychologist John Gottman began video-recording living relationships, microsecond to microsecond, to study how couples interact. By studying these micro-movements, Gottman was able to predict which relationships would hold and which would dissolve.

Most people do not seem to perceive microexpressions in themselves or others. In the Diogenes Project, for example, researcher Paul Ekman found that these tiny movements often can expose lying, and that a very, very small percentage of those he studied had a preternatural knack for detecting them. He now claims that anyone can be trained to see such microexpressions relatively easily.

[edit] Masking

The neurotoxin, Botulinum toxin, commonly known as Botox, is used in the medical cosmetic treatment of dystonia (involuntary muscle contractions) but it is also helpful in concealing unconscious facial microexpression. Neurotoxins operate by interfering with the normal signalling between nerve cells, in the case of Botox by interfering with the release of acetylcholine, a very common neurotransmitter that helps control muscles (peripheral motor neurons). The botulinum toxin interferes with the nerve system that is sending their chemical signal to the muscle, which can prevent the muscle from contracting for example. This can lead to distorted patterns of motor nerve excitation which is not fully understood. In the brain, the difference between a conscious "lie" and a conscious "truth" is a difference in neurological pathways. These different pathways connect the acetylcholine signal to the motor neurons, hence the twitching eye of the liar. Applied with the correct precision, Botulinum toxin can be used to specifically clog the "lying" pathways without hampering the "truthful" pathways. ^{[verification needed]}