Monkeys' brains are wired to read body language – just like ours

By Jessica Taubert, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic drove a surge in remote work and learning, videoconferencing apps such as Zoom saw their user numbers boom. Plenty of other options were available, but the exponential growth in videoconferencing underlines an essential aspect of human communication: to do it effectively, we need to see each other.

And it’s not just about facial expressions. Body language is also a very powerful form of social communication used to express how we feel to the people around us.

Indeed, body language is so important that a part of our brain called the visual…

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