Asymmetry In Facial Emotional :: essays research papers

Asymmetry in Facial Emotional Expression.Abstractenquiry in the recent has demonstrated that the chastise hemisphere of the thinker is predominate in the detection and brass of sense. As a result of intersection point of the flighty system, the expectation was that the left side of the face would express emotion more intensely than the cover. This was tested by using left and right composite faces, showing them to participants, asking them to rate which of the two faces was more intense. The determination was that participants judges the left composites to be more emotionally intense than the right composites, thus supporting the hypothesis that there is asymmetry in the nervus nervus facialisis expression of emotion. This finding leads to the conclusion that the right hemisphere is dominant in the perception, expression and general procession of emotional information. Crossing over of the nervous system occurs at the decussation of the pyramids , this is a site just above the medulla-spinal cord junction at which the nerve fibres from either side of the brain cross over to the contralateral side of the body (Marieb, 1998). This means that the sensorial information from the right side of the body goes to the contralateral side of the brain, in this case the left hemisphere, and vice versa. Due to this cross over, each hemisphere has motor control over the contralateral side of the body. The brains hemispheres are specialised in their functions, amongst others, the left hemisphere is dominant in language, mathematical reasoning and logical thinking. The right hemisphere is dominant in facial recognition, expression and spatial thinking. These findings that the different hemispheres are specialised in their function have come from experiments performed on those with damage to specific part of the brain thus being able to isolate the particular damaged area and experiment upon this. Because the hemispheres are specialised in their functions, the psyhcologists in the past have developed theories on asymmetry in emotional perception and expression. It has been found from previous studies that the right hemisphere is dominant in facial recognition and expression. It has been proposed that the right side of the face is more openly expressive, temporary hookup the left side of the face is private (Sackheim, Gur, 1978). Darwin first proposed the importance of expression as a form of communication that had survival value for the compassionate species (Atkinson, Atkinson, Smith, Bem, Nolen-Hoeksema, 1996). Later studies found that there were six distinct emotions that can be reliably recognised universally in the human face.