Facial expressions arise from brain networks that encode slow, context-rich meaning and fast muscle control on different time scales, keeping smiles and threats socially precise.

Credit - Photo-Illustration by Chloe Dowling for TIME (Source Images: Klaus Vedfelt—Getty Images, Tim Robberts—Getty Images, Kelvin Murray—Getty Images, Robert Recker—Getty Images, Howard ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Look at the picture above. Do you think the ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When it comes to flirting, men and women aren’t necessarily great at reading the nonverbal cues that show someone is romantically ...

Scientists call this phenomenon emotional mimicry. Biologists and psychologists consider this automatic matching of another’s ...

Whether at a birthday party in Brazil, a funeral in Kenya, or protests in Hong Kong, humans all use variations of the same facial expressions in similar social contexts, such as smiles, frowns, ...

Lay presentations of research on emotions often make two claims. First, they assert that all humans develop the same set of core emotions. This claim is called the “basic emotion approach” (Ekman, ...

I fantasize about being able to talk to my cat. The dream is not so much that I’d get to engage in deep conversations with her, but that I might be able to chat about the simple things: Are all of ...