A Botox gap in understanding emotion The inability to show those subtle messages about our feelings – that smile or that frown – could hamper social awareness. Botox may be famous for erasing frown lines, but it also may disrupt an important chain of communication between the face and the brain. Not only do our facial expressions reflect our emotional ups and downs, they appear to send crucial feedback to our brain, suggests a growing body of research. Without that full feedback loop, our ability to understand — and be understood — might be constrained. In a recent study of women undergoing cosmetic treatment with Botox, researchers found that the treatment, which blocks facial nerve impulses, seemed to slow the ability to comprehend emotional language. "We know that language moves us emotionally," said the lead author, David Havas, a psychology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "What this study shows is that that's partly because it moves us physically." Those findings, which will be published in the journal Psychological Science, complement earlier research showing that mimicking emotional expression triggers a matching emotional response, says Fritz Strack, a psychologist who was not involved in the research and who studies emotion and cognition at the University of Würzburg in Germany. He cited, as an example, the response elicited by holding a pen in one's teeth, activating the muscles used in smiling. In studies using this pen-in-mouth procedure, which Strack and his colleagues pioneered, people actually feel happier and respond more positively to stimuli such as cartoons when they hold a pen between their teeth than when they hold it between their lips, which forces a frown. In a study published in 2007, Havas and colleagues built upon those findings. They found that participants holding a pen in the "smile" position read happy sentences — such as "Finally, you reach the summit of the tall mountain" — more quickly than they did while holding the pen in the "frown" position. In contrast, participants read sad sentences — such as "You hold back your tears as you enter the funeral home" — more quickly when holding a pen in the "frown" position. more-- http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/31/health/la-he-botox-20100531