Feeling subdued: Amanda Holden has admitted to using Botox - with recent research saying it can affect the emotions
Botox users have long been mocked for their inability to show emotion on their partially paralysed faces.
But new research suggests the anti-wrinkle jabs could also affect women’s ability to experience feelings in the first place.
In a study, those given the toxin injections experienced significantly less reaction to emotionally charged films than those who had not had the treatment.
The research reinforces the psychological theory that facial expressions can affect your mood, as well as being an indicator of it – so, for example, not being able to smile means you do not feel as happy.
Used by celebrities such as Amanda Holden, Kylie Minogue and Katie Price, Botox is one of the fastest-growing cosmetic treatments, with British women receiving up to 500,000 injections of the botulinum toxin every year.
The £200 jab effectively ‘freezes’ the facial muscles around wrinkles, smoothing the skin but inhibiting facial expressions.
For the research, 68 women were divided into two groups. Half were given Botox injections and half Restylane, a cosmetic filler that does not affect facial muscles. The women did not know which treatment they had received.
Before the injections, all the women were shown three short video clips and asked to rate them depending on how strongly they reacted to them emotionally.
One, a clip of a contestant on a reality show eating live worms, was meant to provoke a strong negative reaction. Funny video clips were used to provoke a strong positive reaction, while a ‘mildly positive’ third film came from a documentary about artist Jackson Pollock.
Two or three weeks after being given the treatment, the women were shown a similar set of videos and their reactions tested again.
The researchers found that those who had been given Botox showed an ‘overall significant decrease in the strength of emotional experience’ compared with those who had been given Restylane.
A report on the research by Madonna’s dermatologist Fredric Brandt and three psychologists from Columbia University in New York is published in the academic journal Emotions.
They conclude that the study’s findings support the idea that facial expressions are part of a ‘feedback’ loop that heightens our emotions.
Researcher Joshua Davis said: ‘With the advent of Botox, it is now possible to work with people who have a temporary, reversible paralysis in muscles that are involved in facial expressions.
‘The muscle paralysis allows us to isolate the effects of facial expression and the subsequent sensory feedback to the brain.
‘With Botox, a person can respond otherwise normally to an emotional event, for example a sad movie, but will have less movement in the facial muscles that have been injected, and therefore less feedback to the brain.
‘It thus allows for a test of whether facial expressions and the sensory feedback from them can influence our emotions.’
The findings are backed up by a similar study by scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published in the journal Psychological Science.
This found that women who had been injected with Botox were slower at comprehending emotional sentences than those who had not had the treatment.
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Rajneesh !! What does it means "Botox jabs" ?
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Compare --New Photos of Kate Gosselin With Botox
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