We already know that faces are incredibly central to human interaction, but facial recognition may also be fundamental to our brain’s development.

Science has long demonstrated that even newborn infants have a strong preference for human faces over other stimuli. Now, a new study from the University of California, Los Angeles, may have found that our preference for faces begins even before birth itself!

These researchers exposed fetuses to triangles of red dots which sought to mimic facial structures, by representing the triangle that two eyes and a mouth create in a real face. In fact, past research has shown that such triangles serve as similar stimuli to faces for newborn children.

After projecting these dots into the fetus’ peripheral vision, researchers slowly moved them away from the fetus’ line of sight. Amazingly, ultrasound pictures show that a significant number of fetus’ moved their heads to follow the dots. While this was still a minority of total exposures, when contrasted with nonfacelike triangles, the fetuses reacted almost three times as often.

While some critics have said that it is too early to conclude any level of actual facial recognition, the very method of projecting images into the womb has yielded praise. Scott Johnson, a developmental psychologist uninvolved in the study, said the method “opens up all kinds of new doors to understand human development,” adding that it was “very, very exciting.”

While it may be premature to conclude a preference for faces at this stage in development, such a conclusion would be consistent with previous research that has found a consistent preference for human faces amongst newborn babies, within minutes of birth.

For example, a 1974 study showed newborns images of faces after only nine minutes. They found that the newborns would follow these faces as they moved for longer than they would for similar images of unintelligible images.

Subsequent research found that, within hours, babies would be able to differentiate their mother’s face from strangers, showing a preference for their mother. What is most striking about this is the speed at which young humans learn how to recognize and differentiate faces.

Similar research has even found that newborns, after only a day, show increased preference towards “beautiful faces.” These researchers contended that such faces better represent the stereotypical or “prototypical” human face, helping to explain these surprising results.

If facial recognition is really this deeply ingrained in our brain’s development, it would help explain the notion of universal emotions that span cultures. Followers of this blog will be familiar with the notion of universal basic emotions, and of the idea that these have an evolutionary origin.

For more information on this, check out our relevant blogs here and here!

Why does that person look so angry?

You don’t have to have any sort of chronic anxiety to understand how easy it is to misunderstand other people’s facial expressions. We often interact with strangers, or even friends, and find ourselves unable to read their emotions, fearing that they are unhappy or angry.

In fact, newly published research suggests that feelings of anxiety do actually make us misread ambiguous facial expressions. Not only are we left unable to accurately determine their emotions, but we are more likely to mistakenly conclude that they are angry.

A group of researchers at the University of Bristol sought to investigate the role that anxiety has on impairing emotion recognition. They brought together a group of volunteers and exposed them to a series of images showing the same face, but with fifteen different emotional expressions. These ranged from surprise and happiness to disgust and anger, and the volunteers were asked to identify each emotion. A follow-up study expanded this analysis to 45 images.

Sounds pretty straightforward, but here is where the experiment gets really interesting. Each participant was given a facemask that pumped air into their lungs. Now, some of these facemasks simply delivered normal oxygen-dominated air, but half of them contained large amounts of carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide spiked participants’ heart rates and blood pressure, causing anxiety attacks.

When compared to the control group, who was given normal air, the participants who inhaled carbon dioxide were about eight percent worse at correctly identifying emotions. Moreover, they tended to perceive anger much more often than happiness.

This is certainly not the first evidence that anxiety emphasizes negative emotional recognition. As this 2016 study outlines, a great deal of research demonstrates how those with social anxiety have trouble recognizing emotion and often attribute anger or sadness to neutral expressions.

Similarly, other disorders, such as depression and eating disorders, thwart one’s understanding of facial expressions.

All of this is perhaps not surprising, however, given the role of the amygdala in the recognition of ambiguous expressions. The amygdala, which is deeply connected with anxiety and fear, is activated when we see people with uncertain expressions, firing according to the level of perceived ambiguity. Similarly, it is also activated when attempting to read fear into other people’s faces.

Given that the amygdala is connected with both anxiety and ambiguous expressions, it would certainly make sense that increased levels of anxiety would thwart effective emotional recognition.

So perhaps, in your next uncertain social interaction, don’t conclude that the other person is angry with you. Perhaps, they are just distracted or not particularly emotive, leading to ambiguous expressions.

For more information on the neurological underpinnings of emotional recognition, check out our past blogs here and here.