Blushing is irrepressible!

The brain can’t stop the flushing, it’s purely emotional! A surprising Anglo-Danish study put 16- to 20-year-olds in an MRI to examine their brains while they watched videos of themselves or others singing karaoke. They blushed a lot more…

Yet another original research on the face this week in It’s my health with Géraldine Zamansky, journalist at the Magazine de la Santé on France 5. So our cheekbones can betray our emotion, but not an excess of reflection on our relationship with others.

franceinfo: After cheek sensitivity and the diagnosis of diseases through facial temperature, a Danish study is interested in the mechanisms that make us blush?

Geraldine Zamansky: Exactly, and this time it was teenagers who were mobilized, in the hope that this age – where one is often embarrassed – increases the chances of seeing them blush during the experiment. First step: being filmed while they were doing karaoke. Second step: watching this video and that of the other volunteers while having their head in an MRI.

Yes, the brains of these teenagers were explored in detail while they watched their disastrous performance, since the songs chosen by the researchers were impossible to master on the first try. Shame. Especially since they knew that their failure was also seen by the rest of the group, as Dr. Milica Nikolic, who originated this protocol at the University of Amsterdam, told me.

So, obviously, mission accomplished: they blushed!

And yes, as expected, when they watched themselves singing. This was scientifically measured by the rise in temperature of their cheeks. And the MRI found the activation of a part of the cerebellum.

Now, as Dr. Nikolic explained to me, this particular area is known to contribute to the management of emotions, and in particular a kind of automatic empathy towards a person with whom we can identify. Or here, towards ourselves, on a video.

But no “awakening” of the networks mobilized to reflect, analyze relationships with others for example, nothing. The red would therefore rather rise to the cheeks, by a sort of primitive emotional reaction. And not as a result of a subtle analysis of the image, which one could give in front of such and such a person.

So blushing easily doesn’t reflect a brain that is more “worried” than average about judging others?

Not at all, but it can generate stress in this area, which aggravates blushing. And some then develop a real social phobia. A vicious circle sometimes slowed down by relaxation or meditation techniques.

But Dr. Nikolic’s next research won’t assess their effectiveness: she first wants to know at what age we start blushing, before or after our first birthday? When do we perceive the notion of an embarrassing or rewarding situation, since that’s another cause of more red cheekbones, left out of this research.

The study