Unravelling the physiology of facial motor control: voluntary and emotional pathways

Facial expressions are vital for social behaviour, especially for non-verbal communication since they convey human emotional states. Facial expressions are performed by the coordinated activity of facial muscles. These muscles have specific anatomical and histological features due to the wide range of functions they perform. However, the precise mechanisms of how these muscles are coordinated and influenced by emotional processes is still unclear. Therefore, the scientific work done during this 3-year PhD program aimed at investigating the complex neural mechanisms involved in voluntary facial movements as well as the execution and recognition of facial expressions, focusing on the integration of sensory, motor, and cognitive components in facial expression recognition and examining how these processes are influenced by altered sensory information, aging. Results provided the first demonstration of: 1) how interhemispheric connectivity in the face motor cortex is functionally distinct from the hand system, supporting a specialized and lightly coupled transcallosal organization for face motor control, 2) how aging influences facial expressions recognition, 3) how impaired sensorimotor integration leads to a reduction of facial expressions recognition ability.