Recognizing others' facial expressions is an essential talent in human communication because it allows us to immediately comprehend the emotional condition of the person in front of us, anticipate their reactions, and communicate with them. In everyday life, we are often confronted with confusing or even ambiguous expressions: "clear" expressions are unmistakable, such as a cheeky smile or a flood of tears; "ambiguous" expressions are doubtful microfacial details, such as a frown that is somewhere between sardonic and confused. The study "Facial palsy reveals the sensorimotor contribution to facial-emotion recognition", published in PNAS by a research team from the Universities of Padua and Parma, clarifies a critical point about recognition mechanisms: when a face becomes difficult to read, our body participates silently. Cognitive neuroscience has long sought an answer to the question of how our brain understands the nuances and emotions expressed on the faces of others. According to some beliefs, the brain understands other people's emotions primarily through visual analysis of faces: that is, the brain simply compares faces to visual models that it has learned to remember. Other theories, however, argue that sight alone is insufficient and that the brain also involves motor systems, the same ones we use to express emotions through our faces: it's as if we simulate them within ourselves; that is, in order to understand others, we make an "invisible" attempt to imitate their facial movements. The new study addresses this issue by utilizing a specific experimental condition: involvement in a study of people with congenital facial paralysis (Moebius syndrome) or acquired facial paralysis. In this regard, facial paralysis—the partial or entire loss of the ability to move facial muscles—is a legitimate experimental field. This disorder limits, and in some cases removes, the capacity to move the face without using artificial changes. Comparisons between individuals who are born with paralysis, such as those with Möbius syndrome, and those who develop paralysis later in life enable us to identify the primary function of motor experiences. The findings indicate that the involvement of facial sensorimotor systems—the signals sent to the brain that connect the senses and actual muscle movement—is especially essential when confronted with ambiguous expressions. This study reconciles the two theoretical views and creates a new conceptual framework to recognize other people's emotions. This finding turns a decades-long "either/or" dispute into a scientifically testable explanation: we now understand when and why visual and sensorimotor information interact.