I’ve always wondered how someone could date a professional actor. How would you know he was telling the truth? If he was a good actor, are you simply left to your intuition to determine the truth? Some might throw politicians into that category and perhaps lawyers, but actors are specifically paid to mask their thoughts or feelings and sometimes take on the persona of someone else. Card players are actors too, assuming risk with every hand to yield the highest benefit and not get excused from a game.

This ability to completely transform typical gut responses into calculated exterior reactions is a skill. Reading a poker face also requires skill. Most people can recognize and distinguish between faces, but not everyone can hide his feelings. Neurotypical people interact (and understand the social signals of) using gestures, facial expressions and body postures. Mirror neurons in the brain provide definition of the actions of other people and allow us to imitate them. You might have heard of “Monkey See, Monkey Do.” Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist, says mirror neurons are essential brain cells for social interactions. “Without them, we would likely be blind to the actions, intentions and emotions of other people,” says Iacoboni. “The way mirror neurons likely let us understand others is by providing some kind of inner imitation of the actions of other people, which in turn leads us to “simulate” the intentions and emotions associated with those actions.”

In the mid-1960s, scientists began working on computer recognition software. Now, facial recognition technology is used in a variety of arenas including social media, cell phones and security. Imagine facial recognition software run with a video surveillance system in a casino to find card counters, thieves or other suspected criminals. The images could be run through a database for identification, revealing the identity of even the best poker face. In this way, the recognition software has its version of mirror neurons, however on a casino floor you will not be able to see its response.

In Brian Brydon’s “Do Facial Expressions Accurately Represent Feelings?” he discusses the modern idea of facial recognition technology, citing Facebook’s 2017 patents that would allow the ability to gauge a user’s emotional response. Think of liking and disliking content with your expressions instead of clicks. What if advertisers could evaluate how people react to ads while they are perusing their Facebook home pages? If facial recognition software was inserted into your favorite social media page, would you be able to hide your emotions?

Lisa Feldman Barrett, author and psychology professor, proposes there is more to evaluating someone’s emotions than just facial expressions. She says the brain uses more than just a facial expression to understand how others are feeling. “We use context — what happened before and what’s going on around the face — and past experiences to create a mental categorization of the emotions people are feeling,” says Barrett. “Without context and a cultural knowledge of what that context could lead to, we can’t accurately tell what emotions people are experiencing by the expression on their face.”

Through her research, Barrett proposes that emotions are mental constructs made from a more basic set of sensations (arousal, calmness, unpleasantness and pleasantness) and our cultural understanding of the world around us. This would certainly mesh the idea of using both past and present data within the human brain to evaluate (and show) emotion. This theory infers that facial recognition software might not be as effective as one might think. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye, even when staring into the most experienced poker face.