Individuals modulate their facial emotion expressions in the presence of other people. Does this social tuning reflect changes in emotional experiences or attempts to communicate emotions to others? Here, “target” participants underwent facial electromyography (EMG) recording while viewing emotion-inducing images, believing they were either visible or not visible to “observer” participants. In Study 1, when targets believed they were visible, they produced greater EMG activity and were more accurately perceived by observers, but did not report accompanying changes in their emotion experience. In Study 2, simultaneous facial EMG recording and fMRI scanning revealed that social tuning of targets’ facial expressions correlated with activity in brain structures associated with mentalizing. These findings speak to long-standing, competing accounts of emotion expression, and suggest that individuals actively tune their facial expressions in social settings to communicate their experiences to others.

People commonly communicate emotional states through facial expressions. However, existing neuroimaging research focuses almost entirely on brain systems involved in perceiving expressions, leaving unclear whether similar systems are recruited when people generate expressions. Pairs of friends took turns viewing positive and neutral images while undergoing simultaneous fMRI scanning and EMG recording of zygomaticus major, a facial muscle associated with smiling. Participants were instructed that they were either visible to their friend or not visible during image-viewing. When participants viewed positive images, their EMG responses parametrically tracked activity in brain structures associated with experiencing emotion, including ventral striatum, caudate, insula, and anterior cingulate cortex. When further instructed that they were visible to their friend, participants’ EMG responses also tracked activity in structures associated with mentalizing, including temporoparietal junction, superior temporal sulcus, and precuneus. These findings suggest that neural systems involved in perceiving facial expressions also support their production during communication.

Treatment of chronic Rockwood’s type V Acromioclavicular (AC) joint dislocation remains controversial. We describe a surgical technique to reduce and maintain AC joint using a combination of gracilis autograft with GraftMax™ button (Conmed Inc, Utica, NY). Graft was prepared using running whip stitch technique with No. 5 Hi-Fi high strength suture (ConMed Linvatec, Largo, FL). Our technique reduces intraoperative clavicular and coracoid tunnel fracture and restores anatomical coracoclavicular ligament. At sixth week and third month postoperatively, the patient demonstrated good clinical and radiographic outcome.

Self-deception, paranoia, and overconfidence involve misbeliefs about self, others, and world. They are often considered mistaken. Here we explore whether they might be adaptive, and further, whether they might be explicable in normative Bayesian terms. We administered a difficult perceptual judgment task with and without social influence (suggestions from a cooperating or competing partner). Crucially, the social influence was uninformative. We found that participants heeded the suggestions most under the most uncertain conditions and that they did so with high confidence, particularly if they were more paranoid. Model fitting to participant behavior revealed that their prior beliefs changed depending on whether the partner was a collaborator or competitor, however, those beliefs did not differ as a function of paranoia. Instead, paranoia, self-deception, and overconfidence were associated with participants’ perceived instability of their own performance. These data are consistent with the idea that self-deception, paranoia, and overconfidence flourish under uncertainty, and have their roots in low self-esteem, rather than excessive social concern. The normative model suggests that spurious beliefs can have value – self-deception is irrational yet can facilitate optimal behavior. This occurs even at the expense of monetary rewards, perhaps explaining why self-deception and paranoia contribute to costly decisions which can spark financial crashes and costly wars.