Duchenne Quotes

The word “smile” doesn’t even exist in Latin or Ancient Greek. Smiling was an invention of the Middle Ages, and broad, toothy-mouthed smiles (with crinkling at the eyes, named the Duchenne smile by Ekman) became popular only in the eighteenth century as dentistry became more accessible and affordable.

IT’S HARD TO FAKE A SMILE Only one in ten people can voluntarily control the muscles around the eye sockets so well as to fake a true smile.41 Today, an insincere, non-Duchenne smile is still considered one of the most common indicators of deception.

The most universal expression of all is a smile, which is rather a nice thought. No society has ever been found that doesn’t respond to smiles in the same way. True smiles are brief—between two-thirds of a second and four seconds. That’s why a held smile begins to look menacing. A true smile is the one expression that we cannot fake. As the French anatomist G.-B. Duchenne de Boulogne noticed as long ago as 1862, a genuine, spontaneous smile involves the contraction of the orbicularis oculi muscle in each eye, and we have no independent control over those muscles. You can make your mouth smile, but you can’t make your eyes sparkle with feigned joy.

Dear troubles, my amigo Accolades to your valour and vigour in battling Me. Though each time you have lost the crusade, your persistent effort in drubbing me down with tiresome regularity, is remarkable. Sadly your trials have all been clunkers, and your lingering rage at being unceremoniously busted by snippy woman storm trooper inside me to boot is axiomatic. I know it’s not your fault, fighting me is not a cake walk. You can’t quash my acquaintance with the strategic moves you make, or the unreal-fleeting bonds you break. I am rather familiar with aimless, exasperated steps you take and that Duchenne smile you fake. I can, for sure, guess any rare cryptic word you say or sinister cat and mouse game you play. My dear old stinging Gordian’s Knot, I love the way you have always tailed me, but to your dismay I guess I was always ahead of the curve. My love, my darling, quandary little Catch-22, I suggest you kill me now, shoot me now, show no mercy bury me deep, deport me to hellhole, coz I have right to die. Hang me and close me in a gas chamber, entomb me and put my soul in a bottle, cap it tight and throw it in the deep sea. Get rid of me else if slightest of me comes back then my lovely, ‘stumbling hornets nest’, you are bound to fizzle out and evanesce into nothingness. Run, I say, run now and never return, you know I am kinda tried and tested………..

I need not point out that being redheaded is not a maladaptive condition. It’s a very lovely condition. It is an absurdity, offensive to both redheads and geneticists—a group that contains both family and friends—to suggest that red hair might be subject to a force of natural selection so powerful that oblivion awaits. Even actually maladaptive genetic traits, actual diseases with well-understood modes of inheritance, such as cystic fibrosis or Duchenne muscular dystrophy are not likely to go extinct, because carriers of a single copy live healthily and pass the faulty gene on to their children.

Researches of behavioural science have shown that the presentation of flowers to someone almost always guarantees a Duchenne smile - a facial expression of genuine pleasure.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a severe muscle wasting disease caused by mutations in the X-linked DYSTROPHIN gene. This is a large gene that encodes a big protein which acts as an essential shock absorber in muscle fibres. Boys carrying certain mutations in DYSTROPHIN suffer major muscle loss that usually results in death in the teenage years. Females with the same mutation are usually symptom-free. The reason for this is that muscle has a very unusual structure. It is called a syncytial tissue, which means that lots of individual cells fuse and operate almost like one giant cell, but with lots of discrete nuclei. This is why most females with a DYSTROPHIN mutation are symptom-free. There is enough normal DYSTROPHIN protein encoded by the nuclei that switched off the mutated DYSTROPHIN gene to keep this syncytial tissue functioning healthily