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Botox Numbs Emotional Response

If you can't frown, brain finds it harder to be sad, study surmises

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff

Posted Feb 9, 2010 10:45 AM CST
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(Newser) – If you turn your frown upside down with Botox, your brain gets the message and makes you less receptive to negative emotional stimuli. That’s the conclusion of a new study of people who had their frown muscles paralyzed with the cosmetic toxin. Researchers tested subjects on the speed of their response to emotionally charged statements before and after the procedure.

The “happy” response was the same, but the subjects’ responses to sad or annoying statements were slower after they had been injected. “Normally, the brain would be sending signals to the periphery to frown, and the extent of the frown would be sent back to the brain,” a researcher tells Newsweek. “But here, that loop is disrupted, and the intensity of the emotion and of our ability to understand it when embodied in language is disrupted." Sure, the lag was small—less than a second—but “in conversation, people respond to fast, subtle cues.”

An injection in progress.
An injection in progress.   (AP Photo)
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If you are slightly slower reacting as I tell you about something that made me really angry, that could signal to me that you did not pick up my message. - Arthur Glenberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 8 comments
Spudsy
Feb 10, 2010 2:41 AM CST
So..... poison make you happy?
JGirl
Feb 10, 2010 1:08 AM CST
well hmm i dunno about this one. i doubt it affects emotional response to any degree worth considering.
Pseudonova
Feb 9, 2010 7:11 AM CST
This is an old old old phenomenon. Williwm James was the first one to show that emotions could be influenced by sensory feedback from the body. Botox is just another way to manipulate the sensory circuits that provide this feedback. Problem is that emotions can be top-down as well as bottom up. So its treatment efficacy is going to be severely limited.

 
Botox • paralyze • facial expressions • scientific study • cosmetic treatments • medical study • emotional response • frown

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