Brains part that recognises facial expressions discovered

​New York: Researchers, one of them an Indian-origin scientist, from Ohio State University have discovered the area of the brain responsible for recognising human facial expressions.

Using the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique as participants looked at images of people making different facial expressions, the team found that it is situated on the right side of the brain behind the ear in a region called the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS).

The researchers also found that neural patterns within the pSTS are specialised for recognising movement in specific parts of the face. One pattern is tuned to detect a furrowed brow, another is tuned to detect the upturn of lips into a smile, and so on.