Why Darwin Would Have Loved Botox

A fascinating and extensive piece in Discover magazine on why Charles Darwin "would have loved Botox" -- not as a tool of vanity, but of science, to "eavesdrop on the intimate conversation between the face and brain." Here's a snip:

Botox and Dysport are best known as treatments to mask aging. Injections into the muscles that make frowns can slow the growth of lines around the eyebrows. For his brain experiment, Haslinger and his colleagues gave 19 women Dysport injections. Two weeks later the scientists scanned their brains as they showed the women a series of angry or sad faces and asked them either to imitate or just to observe the expressions. Haslinger then ran the same experiment on 19 women without Dysport and compared the two sets of scans.

When the women made sad faces, the same brain regions became active in both those with Dysport and those without. But making angry faces triggered different patterns. In the Dysport-free women, a region known as the amygdala–a key brain region for processing emotions–became active. In the women with Dysport, who could not use their frown muscles, the amygdala was quieter. Haslinger also found another change, in the connections between the amygdala and the brain stem, where signals can trigger many of the feelings that go along with emotions: Dysport made that connection weaker.

Of course neuroscience labs are not the only place where people get shots of Dysport or Botox. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, in the United States doctors administer millions of injections of Botox each year, many of them to people’s faces. Haslinger’s research suggests that this is part of a massive, unplanned experiment.

In June 2008 in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, a team of cosmetic surgeons suggested this experiment is making all of us happier. People with Botox may be less vulnerable to the angry emotions of other people because they themselves can’t make angry or unhappy faces as easily. And because people with Botox can’t spread bad feelings to others via their expressions, people without Botox may be happier too. The surgeons grant that this is just speculation for now. Nevertheless, they declare that “we are left with the tantalizing possibility that cosmetic procedures may have beneficial effects that are more than skin deep.”

The Brain: Why Darwin Would Have Loved Botox (Discover Magazine, thanks Susannah Breslin!)

• [beatgeek]

  I find the subtext interesting here because Botox is heavily marketed to women to remove OMGlinesontheface and of course women are never supposed to A) have lines on their faces or B) be angry. Especially not about the sexism and ageism inherent in, oh, I don’t know, the assumption that it’s a desirable thing to keep them from even looking angry…

• [keighvin]

  What this really does is expose a feedback loop from facial muscles and their incorporation into self assessment of emotional states. This has been known for a very long time – this just incorporates different mechanisms (botox & FMRI).

  Previous studies used a pen held in the mouth in such a way as to either create an imitation of a smile or a frown – neither of which were particularly comfortable. In all cases (these 2 and with a third control group) a small test about the subject’s emotional test revealed statistically significant deviations in the direction of the mimicked expression with no other stimulus.

  Basically, one of the brain’s tools for assessing the emotions, is to probe what face is being made. It’s not a purely internal-to-the-brain evaluation.

  Hand-eye coordination works the same way – which is why mirror boxes work to alleviate phantom limb syndrome (although that one’s even more advanced – what we can see about ourselves, and not just what we feel with tactile senses, can be used as an additional sensory pathway).

• [famous]

  Hey. I’m DISCOVER’s Web editor. Thanks for the link, but the name of the magazine is DISCOVER — no “y” at the end. We’re a real science magazine/Web site; they’re a light science-ish TV empire/Web site.

  http://discovermagazine.com

• [querent]

  @2, nailed it.

  if you are in fact hackable, you better know how it works.

  i like the phrase ‘cerebral-vascular yoga’.

• [janai]

  It’s the Pax!

  Seriously, though, in what way is altering your capacity to feel emotion by injecting poison into your face a good thing? Anger has its purposes….

  • [Antinous]

    Anger has its purposes….

    Being stuck with the traces of anger from twenty years ago isn’t that great. Once you’ve got those scowl lines, you always look angry. It doesn’t matter what you’re feeling. They override all other visual signals. Would you like to be perceived as angry all the time?

• [padster123]

  Didn’t I read somewhere about growing evidence that botox can travel up nerve fibres from the face and INTO THE BRAIN!!!

  Seriously, I’m not making it up.

  Er (pause to Google):

  http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19826503.700-effects-of-botox-are-more-than-skin-deep.html

  Soooo….

• [Takuan]

  yes
  http://traveljapanblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/gallery_fudo2.jpg

• [Michael A. Banks]

  Noting IGPAJO’s comment on this sparking conspiracy theories with regards to making people harder to agitate … it kind of echos A Clockwork Orange, though of course the latter was behavioral conditioning. And it’s more subtle.
  –Mike

• [starcadia]

  Finally we can have realistic Vulcans! Live long and prosper, indeed.

• [Sekino]

  Would you like to be perceived as angry all the time?

  While I don’t think anyone would want that, I also would worry if people would only judge me by the lines on my face. I’m not sure I would want people to think I’m pleased and placid all the time either.

  I’ve been told many times I’m very expressive, whether I’m happy or angry, and it all shows on my face. But I don’t think it’s a bad thing. If my face conveys the whole range of emotions and experiences I’ve been through, then it is part of my identity and fulfills the purpose of a face quite nicely, I think. Nobody is a clean slate (unless they’re 1 year old). Why pretend? If you are truly happy at any given time, it will show through whatever ‘life lines’ you might have.

  Frankly, if people judge my anger level from a quick look at my wrinkles as opposed to my personality and actions, they’re just not worth the effort.

• [IamInnocent]

  Why stop half way ?
  Surgically remove the darn angry muscles !

  J.

• [caleb]

  What would Alduous Huxley think of this finding?

• [starcadia]

  Even better, we should find a way to breed children without angry genes. Heck, let’s remove ALL emotion genes except the happy ones, the joy ones, and the love ones; provided none of those cause people to smile and make other wrinkles, in which case those too must go.

• [MarlboroTestMonkey7]

  Botox my soul with your non metaphysical bliss!

• [jackie31337]

  What about people who have difficulty instinctively matching a facial expression to an emotional state and reacting to it emotionally themselves? I know that I personally have lower-than-average empathy: I can understand and appreciate how someone else feels, but I have rarely actually felt someone else’s emotions with them. As the summary states, I am “less vulnerable to the … emotions of other people”. I have to wonder if the decrease in activity in the brain region for processing emotions is more an indication of reduced empathy than of increased emotional stability.

• [Teller]

  The swing is to Face Yoga.

• [igpajo]

  “People with Botox may be less vulnerable to the angry emotions of other people because they themselves can’t make angry or unhappy faces as easily. And because people with Botox can’t spread bad feelings to others via their expressions, people without Botox may be happier too.”

  People prone to conspiracy theories might believe the true nature of this experiment is actually to make people harder to agitate, thus perhaps easier to placate. If the population is harder to anger, they would be less likely to be influenced by those bucking for militant revolution or resistance to tyrannical overlords.

  Just a thought.

• [ill lich]

  One of the great, unheralded attributes of science, is that by studying the most (seemingly) banal stuff you can arrive at interesting and/or useful conclusions or theories (the study of mold leading to the production of antibiotics is the classic example).

• [starcadia]

  I for one welcome our new non-emoting overlords.

• [Pipenta]

  Is the absence of anger happiness?

  I’m not so sure about that. But a less angry population is easier to control.

  Is this how to make people as docile as sheep, as placid as cows?

• [ripley]

  you don’t have to be prone to conspiracy theories to recognize that anger can be a healthy and useful response. Of course, what you do with it matters.

  and to the extent that anger is a signal that you have been wronged, something which conditions people away from getting angry could condition people away from recognizing when they have been wronged. Add in that certain groups of people are systematically wronged, humiliated, etc in ways to which anger is a sensible response, and you do get closer to a systematic dampening of people’s chances to fighting against those wrongs.

• [Snowpea]

  This goes along with (unscientific) observations I’ve made of my Botox-using mother. My mama is not the happiest camper on the planet at the best of times, and her deep frown lines revealed that trait… and then she got Botoxed several times and I could have sworn she was calmer not just externally but internally.

  She was more pleasant to have around. Obviously some of that was from the fact that she could not frown at me! LOL but also from the way she spoke and what she spoke about… she tended to brood less and criticize less too.

  She has stopped Botox cuz last time, she had complications in one eye and that frightened her enough to stop the ‘tox… I’m trying to figure if she’s returned to previous brooding levels or if the ‘less negative’ outlook has managed to remain.

• [Secret_Life_of_Plants]

  Having actually read Charles Darwin’s “The
  Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals” I can seriously say that Darwin would have probably hated Botox.

• [Spherical Time]

  To those that suggest that perhaps this would make the population more compliant, I’ve been angry at words on a screen before without a face to respond to at all.

  It might make you less responsive to another person’s anger, but I seriously doubt that it would completely remove the ability to feel wronged or aggrieved.

• [dculberson]

  Conspiracy to control the populace? Through botox?! Man, you two need to get out more. Botox is not something that’s utilized by those likely to be oppressed and rioting.

• [squeeziecat]

  did anyone else out there read Uglies? cosmetic modification as a behavioral control method suddenly doesn’t seem so sci-fi…

• [mdh]

  Botox – Botulism Toxin (the same Botulism that makes canned goods bulge) is the the single most potent toxin in the world.

  On that note, I hear alcohol makes people happier.

• [dougrogers]

  Thich Nhat Hahn’s Smile Meditation made easy

• [t3hmadhatter]

  Even still, Botox is a pretty unnatural procedure, and a little creepy looking at times. I, for one, would like to keep my facial expressions, even if it means a bit higher blood pressure.

• [Tirjasdyn]

  That’s not botox…that’s squinting vs none squinting.

• [Antinous]

  Botox is a wonderful thing. If you grew up in the family from hell or spent a decade in a crappy relationship or job, your face frequently reminds you of all those years of bad mood. Once you’ve rewritten your life and your mood, why shouldn’t your face reflect that. People often say that your face should reflect your life, but the people who say that aren’t usually the ones who have had hard lives.

  Also, that look of ethereal calm makes it way easier to sucker-punch somebody.

• [TEKNA2007]

  Sounds like a Stepford injection … more placid, more docile, and easier on the eyes.

  Still, the idea of firewalling a contagion of negative emotion is pretty cool.

  For a while I had a tick in my left eyelid that was annoying the **** out of me; I was thinking of having it Botoxed.