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Charles Bell's (1774–1842) contribution to our understanding of facial expression
The human face reflects a person's character and emotions, both in health and disease. Charles Bell, published in 1806 Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting in which he stressed the importance of understanding anatomy when studying art. He concluded that emotions were revealed in faci...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
SAGE Publications
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9580034/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35259938 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0967772020980233 |
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author | Hughes, Sean Gardner-Thorpe, Christopher |
author_facet | Hughes, Sean Gardner-Thorpe, Christopher |
author_sort | Hughes, Sean |
collection | PubMed |
description | The human face reflects a person's character and emotions, both in health and disease. Charles Bell, published in 1806 Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting in which he stressed the importance of understanding anatomy when studying art. He concluded that emotions were revealed in facial expression and that these expressions were only to be found in humans, not in lower animals. Charles Darwin in 1872 published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, where he acknowledged Bell’s contribution to facial expression especially the role of the nervous system, but questioned Bell’s conclusion, that animals were incapable of showing emotions through facial expression. Darwin reasoned that human facial expressions reflected emotions, some from our primeval state, some from habit but most were universal and controlled by an involuntary nervous system, described by Bell, and now known as the parasympathetic system. This paper explores Bell’s contribution to the understanding of facial expression. We conclude that his understanding of neuroanatomy along with his artistic ability enhanced our comprehension of human facial expressions, although his theological interpretation of the reason for facial expressions and emotions needs to be seen more in the context of nineteenth century Natural Theology. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9580034 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-95800342022-10-20 Charles Bell's (1774–1842) contribution to our understanding of facial expression Hughes, Sean Gardner-Thorpe, Christopher J Med Biogr Articles The human face reflects a person's character and emotions, both in health and disease. Charles Bell, published in 1806 Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting in which he stressed the importance of understanding anatomy when studying art. He concluded that emotions were revealed in facial expression and that these expressions were only to be found in humans, not in lower animals. Charles Darwin in 1872 published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, where he acknowledged Bell’s contribution to facial expression especially the role of the nervous system, but questioned Bell’s conclusion, that animals were incapable of showing emotions through facial expression. Darwin reasoned that human facial expressions reflected emotions, some from our primeval state, some from habit but most were universal and controlled by an involuntary nervous system, described by Bell, and now known as the parasympathetic system. This paper explores Bell’s contribution to the understanding of facial expression. We conclude that his understanding of neuroanatomy along with his artistic ability enhanced our comprehension of human facial expressions, although his theological interpretation of the reason for facial expressions and emotions needs to be seen more in the context of nineteenth century Natural Theology. SAGE Publications 2022-03-08 2022-11 /pmc/articles/PMC9580034/ /pubmed/35259938 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0967772020980233 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Articles Hughes, Sean Gardner-Thorpe, Christopher Charles Bell's (1774–1842) contribution to our understanding of facial expression |
title | Charles Bell's (1774–1842) contribution to our understanding of facial expression |
title_full | Charles Bell's (1774–1842) contribution to our understanding of facial expression |
title_fullStr | Charles Bell's (1774–1842) contribution to our understanding of facial expression |
title_full_unstemmed | Charles Bell's (1774–1842) contribution to our understanding of facial expression |
title_short | Charles Bell's (1774–1842) contribution to our understanding of facial expression |
title_sort | charles bell's (1774–1842) contribution to our understanding of facial expression |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9580034/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35259938 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0967772020980233 |
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