Botulinum toxin and empathy

An important problem in philosophy is the so-called problem of other minds. In short, it involves the question how we can understand the intentions, emotions, feelings, thoughts, etc. of other persons, if we can only see their behaviour. An important step towards the solution of this problem was the discovery of “mirror neurons”. Mirror neurons are neurons that fire when a person acts, but also when he or she sees another person acting. If the latter happens, your mirror neurons mirror in your mind what the other does. Not only humans have mirror neurons, but also primates and birds have, and maybe other animals as well. In fact, they have been first discovered in macaque monkeys (by Giacomo Rizzolatti and his team).
It has become clear that mirror neurons play an important part in reading the minds of others, so in seeing and understanding what other people think, feel, intend and so on, although it is not the only factor that helps interpret other humans. Other important factors are what people say, what they actually do and their gestures, for instance. Autistic people have the problem that they cannot read the mind of others well, which may be caused by a malfunctioning of their mirror neurons.
Our mirror neurons are continuously active, when we see others. “To better understand how we read faces so rapidly and automatically”, David Eagleman and his team invited test persons to his lab, so he tells us in his book The Brain. The Story of You. The test persons got two electrodes on their faces and they were asked to look at photos of faces. “When participants looked at a photo that showed, say, a smile, or a frown, we were able to measure short periods of electrical activity that indicated their own facial muscles were moving, often very subtly. This is because of something called mirroring: they were automatically using their own facial muscles to copy the expressions they were seeing. A smile was reflected by a smile, even if the movement of their muscles was too slight to be visually obvious. Without meaning to, people ape one another.” Note that normally you are not aware of this mirroring process and that it happens automatically. (pp. 154-5)
This mirroring effect when you see others may explain why married couples tend to resemble each other after many years. It’s not only because they get the same habits, tend to wear the same kinds of clothes and the like, but also because, so research suggests, “they’ve been mirroring each other’s faces for so many years that their patterns of wrinkles start to look the same”. (ibid. 155)
All this casts a negative light on the use of Botox and other such products as a beauty treatment. Botox is the brand name for Botulinum toxin, a very poisonous product protein derived from a bacterium. Only a few drops in your brain can kill you, because it paralyses your muscles. Injected in your facial muscles, it paralyses them, too (locally), and thereby reduces wrinkling. Besides the supposed effect that it makes you more beautiful, there may be another effect of using botulinum toxin for reducing wrinkling as well. Eagleman and his team showed the photos used in their research also to Botox users. He tells us: “Their facial muscles showed less mirroring on our electromyogram. No surprise there–their muscles have been purposely weakened. The surprise was something else.” Eagleman asked both Botox users and non-Botox users to look at photos with expressive faces “and to choose which of four words best described the emotion shown.” The result? On average, Botox users were worse at identifying the emotions in the pictures correctly.” Why? “One hypothesis suggests”, so Eagleman, “that the lack of feedback from their facial muscles impaired their ability to read other people.” (ibid. 155-7)
Reading emotions in the face of someone else is mirroring them with your own face and then interpreting with your brain what your own face is doing. But if your own face cannot mirror the face of the other, there is nothing to read there for your brain and as a consequence, nothing to see in the face of the other. The emotions of the other cannot be felt. So, the malfunctioning of your facial muscles makes understanding the other and feeling with the other more difficult. Cosmetic beauty can have its price, if this explanation is right.