It appears as the "Faking" essay from the "What Makes Us Smile?" show at the Visionary Museum:
THE FACTS ON SMILING: Faking it or The Real Deal?
"Can you tell a smile from a veil?" - Lyric from Pink Floyd's song, "Wish You Were Here"
Fake smiles actually utilize different muscles than do real, honest to good, genuine smiles. Nineteenth century French neurologist, Guillaume Duchenne, was first to discover the distinction between the muscles in play in producing a fake, versus an authentic smile. To this day, a genuine smile is also known as a Duchenne smile.
Both fake and real smiles employ the zygomaticus major muscle. But a fake smile is deliberate while the other is involuntary and involves more muscles. With a genuine smile, the orbicularis oculi and the pars orbitalis muscles contract causing the cheeks to raise which brighten the whole face and force the skin around the eyes to crease - making laugh lines! An involuntary genuine smile is also one that comes from within and is not learned by watching others. For instance, children who may have been blind from birth will still smile.
When partial facial paralysis occurs, be it through stroke, disease, or accident, a patient may only be able to muster a crooked, lopsided, half-smile when asked to smile on command. But Dr. Robert R. Provine, in his excellent book, Laughter, A Scientific Investigation, points out that those same patients “produce a normal, symmetrical smile if tickled or amused by a joke – the ongoing social stimuli activate intact neuronal pathways that are beyond conscious control. Here we glimpse the otherwise invisible hand of the ancient neurological puppeteer that controls spontaneous laughter and smiling.”
A smile is a curve that sets everything straight. – Comedian Phyllis Diller
