New research from the University of California, San Francisco has shed light on the luminous and seemingly changing face of the Mona Lisa.

Through experiments on visual perception and neurology, they discovered that our emotions really do alter how we see a neutral face.

Erika Siegel and her colleagues study how our emotions change our perceptions of the world around us — even when we aren’t aware that something has changed our feelings.

This relies on the modern theory of “the brain as a predictive organ, instead of a reactive one,” says Siegel.

In other words, we have a lifetime of experience and we use those experiences to predict what we are going to experience next.

“Incoming information is actually just used to correct the predictions if they turn out to be wrong,” Siegel explains.

So, she and her team predicted that how we perceive a new face — as happy, sad, friendly, neutral — actually has a lot more to do with the feelings we are carrying around when we greet it than the expression on that face.

We all have one dominant eye and one more passive non-dominant one.

If each eye is receiving different information, we only consciously perceive what the dominant one sees. But non-dominant sights can still seep into our subconcscious.

Siegel and her team showed 43 people two sets of flashing images simultaneously, so that the dominant eye saw and registered neutral expressions, while the non-dominant eye “saw” flashes of neutral, grimacing or smiling faces, that they would only subconsciously be aware of.

When their non-dominant eyes had seen a happy face, they were more likely to think the neutral face they saw was actually smiling, and the same was true for grimaces and neutral faces.

This means that “if you see the Mona Lisa after you have just had a screaming fight with your husband, you’re going to see [the painting] differently,’ says Siegel.

“But if you’re having the time of your life at the Louvre, you’re going to see the enigmatic smile,” she adds.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【渗透】shèntòu seep into become diffused or spread into

【苦脸】kǔliǎn grimace a facial expression, often ugly or contorted, that indicates disapproval, pain, etc.

美国旧金山加利福尼亚大学的一项新研究让人们对蒙娜丽莎明亮且似乎在不断变化的表情有了新的理解。

通过视觉和神经学实验，科学家们发现，我们的情绪确实可以改变我们看待一个中性的脸部表情的方式。

来自该大学的埃丽卡●西格尔博士及其同事研究情绪如何改变我们对周围世界的理解，即使我们不知道某些事情已经改变了自己的情绪。

西格尔说，这基于“大脑是一种预测性器官而非反应性器官”的现代理论。

西格尔解释说，换言之，“我们积累了一生的经验，并使用这些经验来预测接下来将要经历的事情。”

“如果这种预测被证明是错误的，新的信息实际上只是用于纠正预测。”

因此，西格尔及其团队预测，人们对一张新面孔 —— 究竟是愉快、悲伤、友好，还是中性 —— 的理解，实际上会更多地与我们遇见这张面孔时自身的情绪有关，而不是这张面孔的实际情况。

每个人都有一个主视眼和一个更加被动的非主视眼。如果两个眼睛接收到的信息不同，那么我们下意识地只接受主视眼所看到的情景。但非主视眼所看到的信息仍然会留在我们的潜意识中。

西格尔的团队向43人同时展示两组一闪而过的照片，以便让主视眼看到并记下中性表情，同时让非主视眼“看到”中性、苦笑或微笑的面孔，而参与者只能下意识地明白这一点。

当参与者中非主视眼看过的是笑脸时，他们更倾向于认为中性面孔实际上是在微笑。而对于看到了苦笑表情面孔的参与者，他们会觉得中性面孔是苦笑。

西格尔说，这意味着“如果一个人刚刚同丈夫大吵一架，那么在她看到蒙娜丽莎这幅画后会有不同的理解”。她补充说：“但如果你正在享受卢浮宫的美好时光的话，那你便会看到蒙娜丽莎神秘的微笑。”

(Chinadaily.com.cn)