About Face

What is special about the face, and what happens when\nneurological conditions make expression or comprehension of the\nface unavailable? Through a mix of science, autobiography, case\nstudies, and speculation, Jonathan Cole shows the importance not\nonly of facial expressions for communication among individuals but\nalso of facial embodiment for our sense of self. He presents, in\nhis words, \“a natural history of the face and an unnatural history\nof those who live without it.\"The heart of the book lies in the\nexperiences of people with facial losses of various kinds. The case\nstudies are of blind, autistic, and neurologically impaired\npersons; the most extreme case involves Mobius syndrome, in which\nindividuals are born with a total inability to move their facial\nmuscles and hence to make facial expressions. Cole suggests that it\nis only by studying such personal narratives of loss that we can\nunderstand facial function and something of what all our faces\nreflect.

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