The Act of Smiling

A few years ago I happened to read this book called 'Phantoms in the Brain' by Dr. V. S. Ramachandran. He said there are two different circuits for the act of smiling. 'When you see a friend you grin. But, when the same Friend aims a camera at your face and asks you to smile you fail to do so. Instead of a natural expression, you produce a hideous grimace.

The reason these two kinds of smiles differ is that different brain regions handle them and only one of them contains a specialised "smile circuit". A spontaneous smile is produced by the basal ganglia. When you encounter a friendly face, the visual message from that face eventually reaches the brains emotional center or limbic system and is subsequently relayed to the basal ganglia, which orchestrate the sequences of facial muscle activity needed for producing a natural smile. These entire cascade of events happen in a fraction of a second without the thinking parts of your cortex ever being involved.

But when someone asks you to smile, the verbal instruction from the photographer is received and understood by the higher thinking centers in the brain, including the auditory cortex and language centers. From there it is relayed to the motor cortex in the front of the brain, which specialises in producing voluntary skilled movements'.

So when you smile next time at your friend and at the camera remember the work that our brain carries out.