This new android, reported on by Wall Street Daily, is designed to be a resourceful human companion equipped with an animated neck, three discs and a set of eyes.

Check out the link to the original article to view a photo of this new Anthropomorphism machine.

Polish designers are the brains behind this new devise coined  Emotive Heady System or EMYS.  Chief robot designer Professor Krzysztof Tchon comments on their creation,

“the robot is meant to accompany humans in their domestic environment or at offices…so it has to perform some functions useful for humans.  That’s why the robot is able to express emotions to a certain degree and also read human emotions and react accordingly.”

The researchers hope their robot will pave the way towards natural  and unselfconscious human-robot interactions.

This suggests that the smile is not a reflexive response mimicking a human behavior but rather an independent action.

The National Right to Life News Today has just released additional photos of facial expressions in the womb.  These photos are extremely interesting as they highlight that smiles and perhaps laughter occur even early than thought at around 24 weeks.

Peter Tallack affirms in In the Womb for National Geographic that, “Whatever the fetus is feeling, at 20 weeks she is certainly capable of demonstrating lots of facial expressions. 4D scans have revealed babies not only grimacing but also seeming to smile and even laugh.”

The 25 year-old from Fort Worth, Texas is doing very well.  Mail Online News has reported that since his surgery a handful more have received the full face transplant paving the way for the argument that it should more widely available.

The surgery is revolutionary.  After two dozen surgeries and still no recognizable features of a face,  Dallas Weins decided to receive the full face transplant.

He commented, “Having a new face has changed me dramatically.”  He goes on to admit that the decision to receive the transplant was more for his daughter than for himself.

In 2008 a high-voltage power line accident badly burned Weins’ face off.  Not quite four years later, he has now regained his sense of smell and is able to control his lips.

A study on Wein’s case as well as two others verifies, “The procedure can correct ‘severe deformities in a single operation’ rather than years of reconstructive surgery.”

‘To undergo a face transplant and regain normalcy allows me to do whatever I want to do,’ Weins said. ‘It’s a journey that I’ve just started.’

To see before and after photos of Dallas Weins click here.

Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study focused on the facial expression of the emotion of anxiety and claims to have found the facial characteristics that are connected to the display of that emotion.

The research, conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London, was not clear if they were going to try to conduct additional research to see if this could be considered a universal facial expression.  It is clear though that further research needs to to be undertaken before any concrete assertions are confirmed.

What are your thoughts on a facial expression for anxiety?

Lead author of the study Dr. Adam Perkins affirms that many animal studies link anxiety to risk assessment behavior, suggesting anxiety can be explained as a defensive adaptation. We wanted to see if this was also the case in humans.’

In the study facial expression images were correctly matched in 89% of emotive scenario presentations on average. The facial expression generated in response to an ambiguous threat scenario was correctly matched to ambiguously threatening scenarios in 90% of scenario presentations.

The IoP researchers delineated scenarios that elicited standard emotions, such as happiness, sadness, anger, disgust and surprise to a group of participants.  Then they described scenarios containing ambiguous threats, which are known to elicit risk assessment and anxiety in rodents.

The study’s findings seemed a bit vague.  They suggest that, “anxious facial expression appears to have both functional and social components – its characteristics help assess our surrounding environment, and communicate to others our emotional state.” However, that same definition can be said of the seven universal facial expressions of emotion along with specified FACS characteristics.

What do the researchers feel are the immediate benefits of this study?

Well, Dr. Perkins states, “We hope our findings will in due course help doctors more effectively diagnose anxiety in their patients.  We also think the findings may also help security personnel identify individuals engaged in wrongdoing by means of their anxious, risk assessing facial expression.”

To see  short facial expression video click here and scroll down.

The Week.com comments that 29 canines were used in this study.  They were shown videos of a woman who first had verbal communication along with eye contact and then verbal communication without eye contact.  The study’s findings, published in the journal  Current Biology, showed that dogs seemed to follow the woman’s gaze only when she looked directly at them and not when she just had verbal communication without eye contact.

The New York Times adds that similar studies have been conducted on infants, and the dogs responded in the same way that 6-month-old babies respond to a similar techniques.

Jozsef Topal a researcher at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and co-author of the study stated, “Dogs are receptive to human communication in a manner that was previously attributed only to humans.”

Dog lovers across the world might be mumbling to themselves that this is old news.  However, it is now being backed by science.  Canine behavior expert Stanley Coren believes that in terms of development dogs are on the same level as  2-year-olds.

“This should reinforce that if we want our dog’s attention , we should be clear about it,” says Adam Goldfarb from the Humane Society of the United States.

Photos By Zack Pumerantz Courtesy of Bleacherreport.com

(Click here to link to a slide show)

*Note from Dr. Matsumoto: It’s important to realize that while the picture above may bring a smile to your face, it is most likely not a genuine picture of emotion. Expressive behaviors such as the one above are likely recruited to facilitate goal-directed behaviors that require exertion, and thus are not necessarily emotional reactions. They could be emotion-like or close to it, but they’re probably not emotions per se.

The fascination of how the brain process objective information is not new to the scientific scene.  Many TV shows such as Lie to Me and court drama series have been zeroing in on this via micro facial expressions of emotion and body language.

Assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College, Ming Meng has come up with some interesting findings in regards to the brain’s organization of these two categories and the possible role they play in autism.

Meng uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), computer vision, and psychophysics to delve into the function of the brain and the processes of our visual world.

EurekaAlert.com commented on Meng and his colleague’s reserach, which was published on January 4th in the Proceedings of Royal Society B (online edition).  Meng’s research focused on how the brain is organized to process visual information particularly the human face.

“We needed to study the full spectrum; the stimuli that make an image look like a face but not necessarily a face. These results would show the subtle differences between the left and right side of the brain as they dealt with this range of images.” Meng noted.  Looking at how the brain processes faces is Meng’s key to unlocking the mysteries of the left brain/right brain paradigm.

The findings of his study as well as similar studies on the face shed light into the complex world of autism, people with face processing deficits, which also make understanding and recognizing emotions difficult.  Meng posits that the reason for social interaction problems especially among autistic children could be a problem with face perception.

“Our results suggest the left side of the brain is processing the external physical input which resolves into a ‘grey scale’ while the right brain is underlying the final decision of whether or not it is a face.”

What are your thoughts on this study?  Do you think it is compounding upon new information or just restating old facts?

Harvard Magazine reports on how Hazel associate professor and experimental psychologist and neuroscientist, Joshua Greene is shedding light on this debate.

Greene posits that rationality and emotion are recruited according to the circumstances, with each offering its own advantages and disadvantages.

A simple metaphor Greene equates with rationality and emotion is to that of the camera.  He states, “The nice thing about the overall design of the camera is that it gives you the best of both worlds: efficiency in point-and-shoot mechanisms and flexibility in manual mode.  The trick is to know when to point and shoot and when to use manual mode. I think that this basic design is really the design of the human brain.”

Green went on to delineate that rationality, unlike “manual mode” on a camera, cannot function independently of emotion,  “Reason by itself doesn’t have any ends, or goals.  It can tell you what will happen if you do this or that, and whether or not A and B are consistent with each other. But it can’t make the decision for you.”

Greene hopes that people may one day improve the judgements they make by learning more about the neurological mechanisms of moral decision-making.

To find out more on the details of his experiments click here.

Blind-sight:  A phenomena where some blind people can “see” emotions in others faces was analyzed.  The research revealed that some emotions are deeply rooted in our brain and not just available to our visual sense of sight.

In September, we wrote a blog entitled “Eyeless Emotions“  about this research by Tilburg scientists.  Watch the video below to learn more about this fascinating revelation.

Thanks to Non-Verbal.info for the video idea!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Researchers from Oxford University as well as Oulu University (Finland) are developing software that can detect an individual’s micro facial expressions.

Microexpressions are concealed signs of emotion that flash on and off a face when a person is trying to hide their emotions.  According to Vision Systems Design this product can be used to train government and airport officials to detect suspicious behavior.

While having the ability (or software) to recognize micro facial expressions is one thing, it is a completely different thing to use that information to detect deception and uncover the truth.

Dr. Matsumoto affirms that microexpressions are not indicators of lying but are clues that a person is hiding something and there is more to the story than is being conveyed.