How People Assess Others' Emotions.

• Position: Brief Article

A frown, smile, raised eyebrows, pursed lips--facial expressions can reveal a lot about how a person is feeling. What enables individuals to make the connection between facial expressions and emotions?

For some time, researchers have known that the right hemisphere of the brain was important to judge others' emotions. A study by University of Iowa, Iowa City, health care investigators has identified specific areas of the brain that aid in emotion assessment of facial expressions. They found that right somatosensory-related cortices may help people to "put themselves in others' shoes" and think about how they would feel if they were making similar facial expressions.

Although the role of the amygdala in processing emotions has received considerable attention in scientific study, the contribution made by cortical regions within the brain's right hemisphere had not been well understood. "Through our investigation, we have discovered some of the neural structures important for empathy," explains Ralph Adolphs, assistant professor of neurology.

He and his colleagues studied 108 patients with focal brain lesions, using three different tasks that assessed the recognition and naming of six basic emotions from facial expressions. The researchers compared the results from the patients with brain damage to 30 control subjects with no history of neurological or psychiatric impairments.

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