Head to toe, in the head

Abstract

Sometime about 250,000 y ago, primates started talking to each other (1). Before that time facial expressions and body language were the main modes of communication among primates. Even today in the presence of our sophisticated language system, face and body gestures play a major role in human communication. If someone tells you that she is not bored with a conversation but her half-open eyelids, raised eyebrows, dropped shoulders, and the way she puts her hand under her chin “tell” you the opposite, you would probably trust the ancient signal more than the modern sounds that we call words. In a recent PNAS article, Fisher and Freiwald (2) might have unveiled where in the brain such signals are encoded.