Thank to you everyone for your overwhelming response to the “Submit your questions to Dr. Matsumoto” post on March 16th. Here are a few questions and answers by Dr. Matsumoto himself!

You can find out more about Dr. Matsumoto and his research at his website

You can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of the series by clicking on the appropriate links.

Q1. Adam L: Why is there no Action Unit #3 in F.A.C.S.? And what does AU #42 mean?

Hey Adam. Actually AU3 exists in BabyFACS, a FACS that is adapted for baby faces. The adult version of that is AU4, but it is left out in the adult FACS because that muscle doesn’t move independently of AU4 in adults. But it exists in kids. I am not sure of any studies that identify the meaning of AU42. I know it has been identified in studies of sleepiness or pain.

Q2. Kyle Stark: Have you noticed any difference in an athlete’s performance when displaying fear nonverbal communication displays such as macro face expressions vs more confident non verbal communication?

Not really. Sometimes I see fear or sadness on an athlete’s face right before competition, but then they turn out just fine in competition. So I began to think that different athletes have different emotions that help prep them for peak performance. Now if you see too much fear or sadness way before competition, like days or months before, that’s not good.

Q3. Oliver Lane:  Do you find any, inspiration or any theories and ideas, from Dale Carnegie’s book “How to win friends and influence people”?

I am not an expert on that book, but know it cursorily. Based on that cursory knowledge I think many of the main principles about the importance of relationships and expressivity are right on and still applicable even today. Maybe especially today.

Q4. Juan Pablo García says: What is your scientific opinion on the physiognomy?

Sorry this question doesn’t make sense to me. If you can you be more specific, I can answer it in the comments section.

Q5. Tim Bubb says: My sociology teacher and I have frequently debated on whether there are any innate parts of nonverbal communication and body language. She is a social constructionist and my belief is that some of it is innate but the vast majority is socialized. I was wondering could you shed some light on that debate?

It is clear to me that facial expressions of emotion, and the physiological emotion system in general, is biologically innate. There are many sources of evidence for this, perhaps the strongest of which are studies of congenitally blind individuals, which cannot be explained by social construction.

Q6. Cristobal says: What is the best way to increase your non verbal awareness? Or to say it another way, to increase your mastery in body language?

Keep practicing, noting behaviors and especially anomalies, and try to find sources that can teach you how to interpret them correctly. There is a growing scientific literature on all of these.

Here’s a blog article that may interest you: Hot Spotting: Practice Makes Perfect

Q7. Tiffany S. says: Do psychopaths have ability to show universal emotions, as we know microexpressions to be? Are they more likely to know when to mimic ‘right’ emotions and mask ‘wrong’ emotions. Are they easier to read in an interview or harder, utilizing microexpression training?

I know of no scientific study of psychopaths and their emotional expressions. However, I have done some reading on psychopaths and have talked to some experts in this field. Based on that I don’t believe that anything about expressions is any different with the psychopaths. Now, they are very different about what events they get emotional about, which is not normal.

Q8. Dan S. says: Why are some FACS codes in parentheses? What does this signify?

Hmm…which ones are you referring to?

Q9. WC says: In your opinion what kind of jobs could you best use this material in aside from the obvious TSA and law enforcement fields?

I would say anything involving face to face interactions. Physicians, lawyers, poker players, therapists, sales, negotiators, etc

Kids across the country are competing at higher and higher levels in sports, in and out of school.  Being a part of a team is great for learning socializing skills and physical activity is good for the body, but are sports emotionally healthy for kids?

For many kids the adolescent and teenage years are physiologically devoted to growth both mentally as well as physically.  How do sports play into the growth of America’s youth?

Youth sports have long been hailed for their physical as well as emotional benefits by many doctors, and cross training is being endorsed more and more.

The question is, are there negative emotional effects from playing sports?

Canada.com has reported on the emotional impacts of concussions on young athletes and how many doctors and parents overlook the possible long term effects of what sometimes seem to be harmless head bumps.

Anxiety and depression or sometimes-profound personality changes can be the direct result of a concussion.

Dr. Shree Bhalerao, an associate professor at the University of Toronto and Department of Psychiatry at St. Michael’s Hospital, who specializes in traumatic brain injury deals with patients who suffer the effects of head trauma even years after the actual event.

Dr. Bhalerao suggests that too much focus in head traumas is on the physical injury itself and not enough attention is paid to the emotional effects such as depression, anxiety, headaches, lack of concentration, and sadness.

Bhalerao uses the metaphor of a globe to delineate the effects of a head trauma, “You can shake the globe, but all the parts don’t settle in the same way.  A huge part (of concussions) is the psychological piece.”

Concussions are caused by a direct hit to the head, neck or face, or by a blow anywhere else on that body that transmits sufficient force to the head.  With a blow to the head, the brain is shaken in the skull, triggering an inflammatory response that can damage or irreversibly destroy brain cells.

Most sensitive is the frontal lobe, the part of the brain that’s responsible for memory, emotion, reasoning, judgment and empathy.  Therefore, people who have suffered a head injury can lose the ability to control their emotions,  says Bhalerao.

He goes on to state that it’s crucial that anyone who starts experiencing emotional or thinking problems after a concussion see a doctor.

“My biggest wish is that more people were aware of this,” he said.

What are your thoughts on head injuries in general?

What about concussions?  Are they dangerous even if the injury itself seems harmless?

Most of us recognize people we know by looking at their faces.  It seems to be an automatic inherent brain function.

But what if you couldn’t delineate between people based on their faces?  There are some people who simply cannot distinguish between faces even those of loved ones such as a husband, wife, son or daughter.

Lesley Stahl and 60 Minutes reports on “face blindness”,  a neurological disorder where people cannot recognize faces.  In a few extreme cases face blind people can’t even recognize their own face.  There seems to be varying degrees to this disorder, whose scientific term is prosopagnosia, but the effects can be devastating for all sufferers.

Imagine a world where your children and even your spouse look like strangers.  It is hard to imagine yet normal functioning brains, like most of us have, encounter a similar problem recognizing faces including those of loved ones if pictures showing only the faces (not hair) are turned upside down.  This begs the question why is there this similarity and what part of the brain is responsible for facial recognition.

Science has not been able to concretely say what areas of the brain are exclusively dedicated to face processing. But they do know that there are two sides to this spectrum.  There are the sufferers of “face blindness” as mentioned above and there are a very few of us who find it difficult to NOT recognize a face even if they only encountered it briefly years ago.  The latter are dubbed “super recognizers”.

The short video below shows you the extremes of “face blindness”.