Happy days: Human brain now registers smiley face emoticon as real facial expression
Cultural use of emoticons has managed to reprogramme people’s brains to respond as if were a real human face, new research has found
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The human brain has adapted to react to emoticons in the same way we would to expressions on real human faces, new research suggests.
Having first appeared in the 1980s, the pattern of brain activity triggered by looking at an emoticon smiley face is now the same as when someone sees a real smiling human face, scientists from the school of psychology at Australia's Flinders University in Adelaide said.
"There is no innate neural response to emoticons that babies are born with. Before 1982 there would be no reason that ':-)' would activate face sensitive areas of the cortex but now it does because we've learnt that this represents a face," Dr Owen Churches told ABC News.
"This is an entirely culturally-created neural response. It's really quite amazing."
The smiley face emoticon was first used in a post by Professor Scott E Fahlman to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board in 1982, Dr Churches added.
To carry out the research, 20 participants were shown images of real faces, smiley face emoticons, and a meaningless string of characters.
Interestingly, when the series of punctuation used to create a smiley face was reversed to show '(-:', or presented upright, no response was triggered. "Areas of the brain most readily involved in face perception aren't able to process the image as a face," said Churches.
Only when the emoticons were presented in the conventional digital communication manner - as ':-)' was the punctuation read as a smiling face.
"Emoticons are a new form of language that we're producing," Dr Churches said, "And to decode that language we've produced a new pattern of brain activity."
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments