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Miles of Smiles

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Jay Mejia
Jay Mejia

Miles of Smiles discusses the neurological basis of different types of smiles. There are two main systems in the brain that can produce a smile - the limbic system, which generates genuine, spontaneous smiles in response to emotions like happiness, and the neocortex, which allows for conscious, voluntary smiling. A true limbic smile involves muscles around both the mouth and eyes, while a forced smile through the neocortex lacks the eye muscles and tends to look unnatural. The ability to smile genuinely is a sign of underlying contentment, even at an unconscious level, whereas an awkward, posed smile indicates conscious thought and control over facial movements.

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Miles of Smiles- Jay Mejia How is it that we smile and why are some smiles so bad? Picture yourself at your 8th birthday party. The lights are off, and in comes the parade of family and friends singing your praises, birthday cake ablaze. That picture is still hanging on the mantle, your 8 year old smile stretched from ear to ear. Compare this to a few growth spurts and pimples down the line: amidst the sea of hormones and excessive cologne. Picture you and your first real date trying to pose for the camera. No, no, nosmile! says the photographer for the fourth time. Awkwardly, you force a smile, which to this day, makes you cringe each time you look at that picture. What differentiates these two smiles? Like most things in life, the answer lies within the brain. The evolution of the modern brain is best compared to the automobiles evolution over time. An automobile is essentially just a wheeled motor vehicle with its own engine. And though the modern cars we drive today dont look anything like a 19th century Benz Motorwagen: bearing 3 wheels, no windows, and a small combustion engine, it is commonly regarded as the first real automobile. A 19th century Motorwagen is analogous to the primitive brain; scientists often call it the reptilian brain. This brain controls only the most basic functions necessary to life, ranging from circulation to respiration.1 These functions are present in all species with nervous systems. Damage to this most basic part of the brain usually results in death. By the time the first affordable automobile, the Model-T, was made 20 years later, cars had evolved. The Model-T sported 4 wheels along with doors and windows. Similarly, the limbic brain gave rise to new developments on top of basic brain functions for the first mammals. With the limbic brain came memory formation, motivation, and emotions. 1,2 One hundred years after the Model-T, we are living in the age of the modern car. Today, when you go for a drive, you can rest assured that your car will have seatbelts, airbags, and Bluetooth. In the modern brain, the newest addition is the neocortex. The neocortex is only present in humans and primates. It allows for almost infinite learning capabilities as well as reasoning and complex decision-making. 1
Though a smile is nothing more than the contraction of certain facial muscles, internally, two very different systems can produce the look. Imagine driving to work in the morning. If theres traffic on the highway theres always the option of taking back roads to get to work. You ultimately get to the same place but you used a different route. On your birthday, you felt true happiness. Being an emotion, real happiness stems from the limbic part of our brains in structures like the hippocampus and amygdala. Requiring no conscious thought, this type of smile is an autonomic response. 3 In your high school prom picture, the cringeworthy smile was not a limbic smile but a forced smile; instead of following a subconscious, autonomic route this smile took the alternate route through the neocortex. This route involves a lot of conscious thought and voluntary motion trying to break down the smile into its components. 4 And so amidst the annoyed demands of the photographer to show teeth, lower lips, and have symmetry, the real smile gets replaced with a fake one that uses conscious movement of the face. This is the reason many people cant smile on cue; they spend too much time planning the individual movements with their neocortex instead of allowing the limbic brain to smile. This also happens when you are smiling for a picture but the photographer takes longer than expected. Conscious thought takes over and your smile starts to look scary. Those who can smile on cue have learned to mimic their limbic brain, though it takes practice and can never be a true replication. 4 Clinically, patients who have suffered a stroke in the neocortex area devoted to voluntary movement of the face, tend to have a drooping of the muscles in the side opposite the lesion. If asked to smile, their smile looks more like a sideways S than the familiar C-shape. However, if the patient is told a joke, or a loved one walks into the room to greet them, a genuine smile is suddenly seen spanning cheek to cheek- true happiness. If the patient is asked to smile immediately after or even to hold their smile in place, their smile subsides and returns to the droopy S-shape. 4 In 1862, this limbic, true smile was best described by French doctor Guillaume Duchenne who, after intensely studying several hundred smiles, concluded that a true limbic smile involved contraction of the muscles in the corners of the mouth as well as
the orbicularis oculi muscles which raise the cheeks and form crows feet around the eyes. Since most people cannot voluntarily contract the orbicularis muscles, its a telltale sign of a true smile. 5 A true smile takes little work. In fact, over-thinking a smile can ruin one. The next time you find yourself on a date, note their smile. Is it one of Duchennes limbic smiles, meaning happiness even at the subconscious level or do you note the hesitation, the voluntary initiation of movement, the lack of crows feet? The answers always in the brain though you may want to take it at face value.
Works Cited 1. Nolte, John. The Human Brain: An Introduction to its Functional Anatomy. 6th ed. N.p.: Mosby, 2008 . Print. 2. Caine, Renate N., and Geoffrey Caine. Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain. Nashville: Incentive Publications, 1990. Buffalo State U. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. 3. Czerner, Thomas B. What Makes You Tick? The Brain in Plain English. Vol. 1. N.p.: Wiley, 2001. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. 4. Ramachandran, V.S., and Sandra Blakeslee. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. N.p.: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998. Print. 5. de Boulogne, Duchenne. Mechanism of Human Physiognomy. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 . Print.

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Miles of Smiles

  • 1. Miles of Smiles- Jay Mejia How is it that we smile and why are some smiles so bad? Picture yourself at your 8th birthday party. The lights are off, and in comes the parade of family and friends singing your praises, birthday cake ablaze. That picture is still hanging on the mantle, your 8 year old smile stretched from ear to ear. Compare this to a few growth spurts and pimples down the line: amidst the sea of hormones and excessive cologne. Picture you and your first real date trying to pose for the camera. No, no, nosmile! says the photographer for the fourth time. Awkwardly, you force a smile, which to this day, makes you cringe each time you look at that picture. What differentiates these two smiles? Like most things in life, the answer lies within the brain. The evolution of the modern brain is best compared to the automobiles evolution over time. An automobile is essentially just a wheeled motor vehicle with its own engine. And though the modern cars we drive today dont look anything like a 19th century Benz Motorwagen: bearing 3 wheels, no windows, and a small combustion engine, it is commonly regarded as the first real automobile. A 19th century Motorwagen is analogous to the primitive brain; scientists often call it the reptilian brain. This brain controls only the most basic functions necessary to life, ranging from circulation to respiration.1 These functions are present in all species with nervous systems. Damage to this most basic part of the brain usually results in death. By the time the first affordable automobile, the Model-T, was made 20 years later, cars had evolved. The Model-T sported 4 wheels along with doors and windows. Similarly, the limbic brain gave rise to new developments on top of basic brain functions for the first mammals. With the limbic brain came memory formation, motivation, and emotions. 1,2 One hundred years after the Model-T, we are living in the age of the modern car. Today, when you go for a drive, you can rest assured that your car will have seatbelts, airbags, and Bluetooth. In the modern brain, the newest addition is the neocortex. The neocortex is only present in humans and primates. It allows for almost infinite learning capabilities as well as reasoning and complex decision-making. 1
  • 2. Though a smile is nothing more than the contraction of certain facial muscles, internally, two very different systems can produce the look. Imagine driving to work in the morning. If theres traffic on the highway theres always the option of taking back roads to get to work. You ultimately get to the same place but you used a different route. On your birthday, you felt true happiness. Being an emotion, real happiness stems from the limbic part of our brains in structures like the hippocampus and amygdala. Requiring no conscious thought, this type of smile is an autonomic response. 3 In your high school prom picture, the cringeworthy smile was not a limbic smile but a forced smile; instead of following a subconscious, autonomic route this smile took the alternate route through the neocortex. This route involves a lot of conscious thought and voluntary motion trying to break down the smile into its components. 4 And so amidst the annoyed demands of the photographer to show teeth, lower lips, and have symmetry, the real smile gets replaced with a fake one that uses conscious movement of the face. This is the reason many people cant smile on cue; they spend too much time planning the individual movements with their neocortex instead of allowing the limbic brain to smile. This also happens when you are smiling for a picture but the photographer takes longer than expected. Conscious thought takes over and your smile starts to look scary. Those who can smile on cue have learned to mimic their limbic brain, though it takes practice and can never be a true replication. 4 Clinically, patients who have suffered a stroke in the neocortex area devoted to voluntary movement of the face, tend to have a drooping of the muscles in the side opposite the lesion. If asked to smile, their smile looks more like a sideways S than the familiar C-shape. However, if the patient is told a joke, or a loved one walks into the room to greet them, a genuine smile is suddenly seen spanning cheek to cheek- true happiness. If the patient is asked to smile immediately after or even to hold their smile in place, their smile subsides and returns to the droopy S-shape. 4 In 1862, this limbic, true smile was best described by French doctor Guillaume Duchenne who, after intensely studying several hundred smiles, concluded that a true limbic smile involved contraction of the muscles in the corners of the mouth as well as
  • 3. the orbicularis oculi muscles which raise the cheeks and form crows feet around the eyes. Since most people cannot voluntarily contract the orbicularis muscles, its a telltale sign of a true smile. 5 A true smile takes little work. In fact, over-thinking a smile can ruin one. The next time you find yourself on a date, note their smile. Is it one of Duchennes limbic smiles, meaning happiness even at the subconscious level or do you note the hesitation, the voluntary initiation of movement, the lack of crows feet? The answers always in the brain though you may want to take it at face value.
  • 4. Works Cited 1. Nolte, John. The Human Brain: An Introduction to its Functional Anatomy. 6th ed. N.p.: Mosby, 2008 . Print. 2. Caine, Renate N., and Geoffrey Caine. Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain. Nashville: Incentive Publications, 1990. Buffalo State U. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. 3. Czerner, Thomas B. What Makes You Tick? The Brain in Plain English. Vol. 1. N.p.: Wiley, 2001. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. 4. Ramachandran, V.S., and Sandra Blakeslee. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. N.p.: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998. Print. 5. de Boulogne, Duchenne. Mechanism of Human Physiognomy. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 . Print.