...How some people always smile perfectly for a photo?

Smile, borrowing Mother Teresa's words is 'a beautiful thing'. Of course we all would agree with her. We smile when we see a friend, which is a spontaneous expression of love. We smile for a photograph too hoping that a smile would improve the photogenicity of our face. But this smile is not the same as that of a friendly smile. We experience an odd sense of difficulty when we smile for a photograph. This post is about the rock solid science behind the difficulty in smiling for a photograph.

Our brain has various regions specialized for different types of functions like say auditory cortex for hearing, visual cortex for seeing and so on. The primary reason for the two smiles to differ is that the brain regions which process them are different too.

The sequence of events which leads to a friendly smile is as follows.

When we see a friend, the visual message is relayed to the brain's Limbic system, otherwise called as the emotional center and it eventually reaches the Basal Ganglia. This region is responsible for co-ordinating a series of facial muscle activity needed for producing a friendly smile. This entire sequence of actions takes place in a fraction of a second without the thinking regions of the brain being involved but with the involvement of the emotional center. This kind of smile could be said to be an involuntary action without any thinking action.

The sequence of events which leads to a photogenic smile is as follows.

When the photographer asks us to smile, those words are received and processed by the higher cortex (brain's thinking center) , the auditory cortex and the language centers. From there it is relayed to the motor cortex, which deals with voluntary skilled movements, like say playing a piano. This motor cortex then co-ordinates the muscles in the face in order to bring about a smile. Photogenic smile, in brain's terms is a complex voluntary activity involving the actions of several (around 12) facial muscles.

The photogenic smile is similar to any other kind of skilled work we do like say driving a car. But the friendly smile is akin to breathing.

The empirical evidence suggesting the existence of two different brain regions for smiles is found in brain-damaged patients. Patients who have had their right motor cortex, which deals with the movements of the left hand side of our body, damaged, were able to produce only right half of a photogenic smile. This is because the left hand side of the body is unable to be commanded by the damaged right motor cortex. One thing to note here is that only the brain region of the patient is damaged but the nerves and body parts like hands, legs are intact. But the same patient on seeing a friend dramatically grins broadly with a 'full' friendly smile. The reason is that the basal ganglia which commands this patient to smile friendly is intact along with the facial nerves and muscles. This is true vice versa too.

Guys don't worry if you are not able to produce a perfect photogenic smile like many of your friends. It is after all in our BRAIN. The only way to start producing a perfect photogenic smile is to teach your motor cortex the skill of smiling. Motor cortex, as already said specializes in voluntary SKILLED movements, is able to learn the complex skill of playing a piano. Wont it learn the relatively easy skill of smiling ? It certainly will. Those people, who smile perfectly for a photo are just the ones who have trained their motor cortices in the skill of smiling. So guys arm your motor cortex with the skill of smiling and keep smiling forever. But please ensure that the people near you don't get frightened. Happy Smiling !