ArticleCortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior2023
Inability to move one's face dampens facial expression perception.
Article in Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Facial palsy reveals the sensorimotor contribution to facial-emotion recognition.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Multimodality Craniofacial Phenotyping of Congenital Facial Weakness Disorders.The Cleft palate-craniofacial journal : official publication of the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association · 2026Article
- Deliberate Facial Mimicry As a Skill That Predicts Emotion Recognition Performance.Affective science · 2026Article
- Recognition of facial expressions from minimal five-point-light displays.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Beyond motor recovery: emerging perspectives in the management of peripheral facial palsy-a narrative review.Frontiers in neurology · 2026Review
- Effortless facial expression recognition without motor simulation.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- On the Role of Sensorimotor Experience in Facial Expression Perception.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2024Review
- Predictive language processing: integrating comprehension and production, and what atypical populations can tell us.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors at 7 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Humans rely heavily on facial expressions for social communication to convey their thoughts and emotions and to understand them in others. One prominent but controversial view is that humans learn to recognize the significance of facial expressions by mimicking the expressions of others. This view predicts that an inability to make facial expressions (e.g., facial paralysis) would result in reduced perceptual sensitivity to others' facial expressions. To test this hypothesis, we developed a diverse battery of sensitive emotion recognition tasks to characterize expression perception in individuals with Moebius Syndrome (MBS), a congenital neurological disorder that causes facial palsy. Using computer-based detection tasks we systematically assessed expression perception thresholds for static and dynamic face and body expressions. We found that while MBS individuals were able to perform challenging perceptual control tasks and body expression tasks, they were less efficient at extracting emotion from facial expressions, compared to matched controls. Exploratory analyses of fMRI data from a small group of MBS participants suggested potentially reduced engagement of the amygdala in MBS participants during expression processing relative to matched controls. Collectively, these results suggest a role for facial mimicry and consequent facial feedback and motor experience in the perception of others' facial expressions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.