Hapware's Aleye is trying to unlock new levels of communication for people who are blind. The Aleye wristband (left) is a bit chunkier than a standard Apple Watch. It's only been a few months since Meta announced that it would open its smart glasses platform to third-party developers . But one startup at CES is already showing off how the glasses can help power an intriguing set of accessibility features. Hapware has created Aleye, a haptic wristband that, when paired with Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, can help people understand the facial expressions and other nonverbal cues of the people they are talking to.

A team of researchers at Ohio State University pinpointed the area of the brain that recognizes human facial expression. Their recent study reveals that this region - the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) - is on the right side of the brain behind the ear. The study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify the pSTS as the region that is activated when their test subjects viewed images of people making various kinds of facial expressions. Using the subjects' fMRI images and comparing them to facial muscle movements in test photographs, the team created a map of pSTS regions that activate for specific facial muscle groups In addition, the study revealed that particular neural patterns within the pSTS are used for specific facial movements, such as a furrowed brow. "That suggests that our brains decode facial expressions by adding up sets of key muscle movements in the face of the person we are looking at," said Aleix Martinez, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State and senior author of the study.

It can take just a fraction of a second to recognise how someone is feeling after first setting eyes on their face. But in this short time, your brain has analysed the facial features, cross-referenced the information and worked out if the person is in a friendly or foul mood – before you are even fully aware. Now researchers have pinpointed the exact region of the brain where this facial decoding takes place, a part of the brain just above your right ear. Researchers have pinpointed the region of the brain where facial expressions are decoded. Using functional MRI scans, neuroscientists monitored brain activity in people's brain as they looked at images of facial expressions.