“Does Botox make you a sociopath?”

…What?  Sorry: I was just fear-mongering for traffic.  Apparently what’s actually happening is that there’s a study out that suggests that people who have deliberately had their facial nerves damaged end up with a reduced ability to perceive other people’s emotional responses.  This is supposedly due to the disruption of a feedback loop between the brain analyzing visual data of other people’s facial features, and a check of the person’s own facial muscles… and I probably got that completely and amazingly wrong, sorry.  Anyway: it probably doesn’t make you a sociopath, no.  Which is probably the wrong term to use, too.

Oh, well: I’m too busy trying to not make the obvious comments about our political/celebrity class to really worry about how badly I got the scientific explanations wrong.  It’s hard going, actually: I’ve never seen the wisdom of injecting botulism toxins into your face, and news like this merely validates that suspicion most neatly…

(Via Instapundit)