Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne b. 1806
Duchenne De Boulogne was a French physician who initiated
pioneering studies on electrical stimulation of muscles, and the first person
to identify microexpressions. Duchenne used electricity as a physiological
investigation tool to study the anatomy of the living body. Duchenne's
iconographic work stands at the crossroads of three major discoveries of the
19th century: electricity, physiology and photography. This is best exemplified
by his investigation of the mechanisms of human physiognomy in which he used
localized faradic stimulation to reproduce various forms of human facial
expression. Duchenne remarked that a person in trying to remember something
raises his eyebrows, as if to see it, and wrote of joy being expressed with two
muscles (zygomaticus major muscle and the orbucularis oculi) contracting to
produce a true smile. The ‘Duchenne smile’ is one that engages these muscles.
Charles Darwin and Paul Ekman built on Duchenne’s work.
Read The mechanism of human facial expression or an
electrophysiological analysis of the expression of the emotions. (1990)
(original work 1862)
