Facial palsy reveals the sensorimotor contribution to facial-emotion recognition.

September 15, 2026| Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Although recognizing emotions from facial expressions appears effortless, the field is divided between vision-based accounts, which posit matching to learned visual templates, and embodied accounts, which posit recruitment of facial motor circuits. We propose an ambiguity-gated, developmentally calibrated architecture in which the recognition system draws on sensorimotor information primarily when visual evidence is insufficient, with early motor experience proposed to shape the threshold and gain of this contribution. We tested this model across three studies (N = 185) integrating dynamic prototypical and nonprototypical expressions, congenital (Moebius syndrome) and acquired facial palsy, and standardized severity grading (Sunnybrook Facial Grading System; SFGS). Neurotypical adults (N = 117) confirmed a robust prototypicality-dependent cost on recognition. Both congenital (N = 15) and acquired (N = 19) cohorts showed severity-performance coupling for nonprototypical expressions, consistent with shared reliance on sensorimotor information when visual evidence is insufficient; only the Moebius cohort showed this coupling also for prototypical expressions, consistent with undercalibrated visual templates following lifelong atypical facial motor experience. Exploratory electroencephalography (EEG) revealed reduced sensorimotor-face-network functional connectivity in Moebius, consistent with altered cross-route integration. Reanalysis of an independent dataset of ultra-ambiguous static morphs replicated severity-performance coupling and revealed Moebius-control mean differences only under high perceptual demand. Together, the findings provide strong behavioral support for an ambiguity-gated, developmentally calibrated architecture and motivate direct tests of how developmental motor experience shapes when-and how strongly-the recognition system draws on sensorimotor information.

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Ancient DNA challenges to admixture narratives: Insights from Notre-Dame Cemetery (1683-1796) in Colonial Montreal, Canada.

Historical narratives of early colonization in Quebec frequently portray French-Indigenous relations as cooperative and characterized by admixture; which are often mobilized in modern debates on false-indigeneity. These narratives have been studied through genealogical, genetic, and bioarchaeological analyses, yet individuals of African descent remain mostly absent from them, while Indigenous peoples are framed largely in relation to colonists. Notre-Dame Cemetery (1683-1796) in Tiohtià:ke-

EconomicsOctober 20, 2026

Understanding consciousness (biological and artificial) as a society of self-schemas.

This article argues that human cognition is more than the performance of functions such as memory, decision-making, and attention. The brain also builds schematic models of those cognitive functions and uses those models to monitor, predict, and partially control them. When you introspect, your understanding of who you are and what is happening inside of you is derived from those schematic, sometimes inaccurate, but generally useful models, rather than from the actual cognitive functions that ar

EconomicsOctober 14, 2026

Educational intervention can rewire village social networks.

Social networks shape behaviour, affect information dissemination and undergird collective action. And they can be exploited in the design of interventions in these domains 1-7 . Although social networks obey fundamental principles, such as the degree distribution 8,9 , they can nevertheless evolve as ties form and break. Here, through a randomized controlled trial involving a total of 8,331 people in 110 remote Honduran villages, we evaluate the secondary effects of a 22-month public-health int

EconomicsOctober 13, 2026

Hyperfunction of PSD-95 leads to hyperexcitability and cognitive abnormalities in MEF2C haploinsufficiency.

Myocyte enhancer factor 2C (MEF2C) is a transcription factor critical for brain circuit development and cognitive behavior. The loss of one copy of MEF2C leads to MEF2C haploinsufficiency syndrome (MCHS), a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by intellectual disability, epilepsy, and behavioral phenotypes associated with autism spectrum disorders. Given that numerous genes are regulated by MEF2C, the neuronal and behavioral deficits in MCHS are complex, and there is currently no effective

EconomicsOctober 13, 2026

Interventions to mitigate post-infection morbidity: Management insights from simple models.

A variety of pathogens that cause acute disease can also affect their host long after recovery. These post-infection effects lead to elevated costs for individuals and societies, which can be mitigated by large-scale interventions. Here, we examine the management of post-infection morbidity with mathematical models. First, we show that long-term usage of nonpharmaceutical interventions can reduce post-acute burden. Second, to investigate how post-infection effects affect optimal vaccination cove