In Your Face

A number of studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging have been conducted on alcoholics recently, exploring the kinds of damage alcohol can do to the brain.

I came across one recently and was surprised to learn that alcoholics, even those who aren’t drinking, can have problems in judging the emotional expressions on people's faces.

Like most of the negative news related to alcoholism and the brain, the study suggests that diminished activity of the amygdala and hippocampus underlie these particular impairments and may also be a part of a wide array of other behavioral problems, including disinhibition and disregard for social norms.

"Whereas nonalcoholic adult men showed stronger activation in the amygdala and hippocampus when viewing faces with emotional expressions, the alcoholics showed decreased activation in these brain areas, and furthermore responded in an undifferentiated manner to all facial expressions. The alcoholics also were impaired on the intelligence-appraisal task, possibly due to their dampened amygdala activity," said Ksenija Marinkovic, assistant professor in residence in the radiology department at the University of California, San Diego, and one of the people, presumably, who presented the alcoholic subjects with positive, negative, or neutral photographs of faces while they were in the scanner, and noted where and when the lights went on or off in their brains.

In conclusion, she said, "Alcoholics have problems in judging the emotional expressions on people's faces. This can result in miscommunication during emotionally charged situations and lead to unnecessary conflicts and difficulties in interpersonal relationships.” 

“No kidding,” I thought to myself, flipping back through the Rolodex in my mind of the “miscommunications” I’ve experienced over the years. As the faces flashed by of girlfriends, taxicab drivers, and bartenders I’ve taken issue with, the idea that many of these conflicts could have been caused by my own inability to accurately read other people and their reactions made sense to me. 

Perhaps my ex-girlfriend Alisha wasn’t actually lying those many years ago when she told me one night she wanted to go home early because she was tired and I took it to mean she was trying to ditch me for somebody else and barricaded the door of my apartment so she couldn’t leave, basically ensuring that she actually would ditch me some months later.

And maybe the bartender who told me he thought I’d had enough just before I broke a glass on his bar wasn’t really mocking me with an arrogant smile, but trying to intercede in a kindly way in a circumstance he recognized could only turn out badly. 

A few days after reading this report, I found myself at Parent’s Day at my daughter’s school. As we were walking down the hallway to one of her classrooms, I spied a poster on the wall with a series of hand-drawn faces on it. Each face had a different expression, with a caption below telling what each one was—Happy, Sad, Angry, Proud—and a headline at the top asking, “How do you feel today?”

I stopped short in the hallway, standing in front of the poster, my mouth agape. Quietly, below the surface, I could feel the lights getting dimmer in my amygdala, my hippocampus growing deathly still. 

“Dad, what are you doing?” my daughter asked, slightly embarrassed as I stood in the middle of the hallway, blocking traffic and staring at a poster designed for second graders.

“Practicing,” I responded, my eyes scanning the faces then checking the captions below, hoping to find a match.

“Well, stop,” she whispered, tugging my sleeve.

Like an engine sputtering to start, my amygdala began to blink again and I turned down the hallway once more.

“What’s next,” I asked, “English?”