Your study asks, do observers actually look at these faces differently?

Yeah, exactly.

And eye tracking gives us a way to answer that question more objectively.

Patients, as they come into our facial nerve clinic, one of their primary concerns is how they are perceived by others or how others that they interact with in their day-to-day life are directing attention to the face.

And so this research, among many other clinical applications, allows us to more objectively answer those questions that are central and important to patients.

So for this study, we recruited 85 lay observers who had no background in facial paralysis, and we had them view highly standardized facial videos of 24 different individuals.

These included patients with complete facial paralysis, patients with facial synkinesis, as well as control subjects without any facial paralysis or abnormal facial movement.

So observers behaved in the way that we expect and most attention was directed towards the central triangle of the face, the eyes, the nose, and the mouth with the eyes receiving the most attention.