Family 'Facial Expressions' linked to Genes

Time and again we have heard people saying each other, you smile like your mummy or both of you sister’s have same smile. It was thought that it may be due to mimicry or spending long duration with each other that you pick up these expressions like smile, anger, frown etc. But now scientists have found out that it is due to the genetics inheritance and not simple mimicry or family ‘signature’.

Scientists at University of Haifa, Israel studied the facial expressions of the 21 subjects from different families, who were born blind along with their close relatives and family members.

Gili Peleg and colleagues interviewed the 21 blind subjects along with their relatives and made them revive the experiences when they felt certain emotions like anger, joy, disgust etc. The interview was filmed and kept for studying later.

Generally people have this wrong notion that blind can learn about the facial expression through touch. When the subjects were asked about the same thing they replied that it is not possible for them to learn through touch sensation as they can’t imagine the mental make up of the face and thus it’s not possible to transfer touch to expression on face.

The most amazing fact that came out of this study was that the blind and the sighted relative’s facial expressions matched almost 80% of the time they were studied and thus it concluded that there was a genetic signature that counted behind all smiles and grimaces.

It was found that the exact same kind of facial expression were shown in the blind subject and the close relative (who were not blind) under study.

The researchers has given one example where the mother of one of the blind boy left him just after two days of his birth and they both met when the boy was 18 years old on some rare occasions. The researchers said "Nevertheless, they demonstrated a unique family facial expression signature."

"We have found that facial expressions are typical to families - a kind of facial expression 'signature'," said Peleg.

Anger was the most common and similar expression between the blinds and their relatives followed by surprise, disgust, joy, sadness and lastly concentration.

"Our next step is to find the exact genes that influence facial expression."

The study is published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.

Darwin was considered to be the first person who researched on facial expression and even he remarked 130 years ago that blind people has similar facial expressions than sighted ones. Through other studies it has been seen that perceiving facial expression depends a lot on nature and environment. It could be termed as a means to communicate with the society, as one can see even two month old baby responding to the expressions like happiness and sadness.

Various studies has shown that facial expressions are genetic and from the time of birth we know how to make certain faces for emotions like joy, sad, cry etc and how to perceive others facial expression. Both genetic as well as environmental factors contribute to it.

Genetics plays a great role in what we are and what we do.

This study using blind people opened up new avenue for the researches "The whole idea is incredibly interesting," says Thomas Bouchard Jr, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. "Knowing that they have never seen their family's expressions; it's an unusual approach," he says.

Though, the study doesn’t link up any specific genes for facial expression, but could still be helpful in studying developmental disorders like autism and psychopathology.