The pioneering experiment used electrical stimulation to stimulate smiles and was inspired by photographs made famous by Charles Darwin.A pain-free current manipulated muscles briefly into action– producing a short uncontrollable smile.Breakthrough in Emotional PerceptionThis is the very first time facial electrical stimulation has actually been shown to affect emotional perception.Dr Korb hopes the research study can explore potential treatments for depression or disorders that affect expression, like Parkinsons and autism.A close up of the stimulation. In the future, nevertheless, we hope to apply this technique to explore facial feeling recognition, for individuals with conditions like Parkinsons, who are known to have actually lowered spontaneous facial mimicry and impaired facial feeling acknowledgment.” Reference: “Zygomaticus activation through facial neuromuscular electrical stimulation (fNMES) induces happiness perception in uncertain facial expressions and impacts neural correlates of face processing” by Themis Nikolas Efthimiou, Joshua Baker, Alasdair Clarke, Arthur Elsenaar, Marc Mehu and Sebastian Korb, 08 February 2024, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.DOI: 10.1093/ scan/nsae013.
