The Cosmetics Testing News

Follow the testing news dedicated to innovations and trends in the evaluation of active, ingredients, cosmetics and medical devices

Your skin never lies: when the unconscious experience of hydration can be measured by Spincontrol

May 30, 2017

Hydration is a very popular cosmetic claim. Skin tightenings, irritations and redness can appear when the epidermis is mishandled. These discomfort feelings can be objectively measured thanks to the behavioral analysis of facial expressions in terms of muscle groups’ mobilizations.

Indeed, facial expressions during pain and discomfort are thought to play a critical role communicating information about the experience. Furthermore, they provide an alternative to common indices of discomfort, such as verbal reports, and the information they provide may be more useful and valid in certain circumstances.

Research into pain and discomfort expression was stimulated by the development of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which is a method that allows any visible facial expression to be decomposed into its constituent movements.

Many efforts have been made in human behavior studies to identify reliable and valid facial indicators of pain.

In these studies, pain expression is widely characterized by the activation of a small set of facial muscles and coded by a set of corresponding actions units.

Using such methods, the present protocol aims to identify quantifiable difference in the decrease in discomfort after a cosmetic treatment.

Volunteers apply the testing product in front of a one-way mirror.

What happens behind the mirror? A camera records each micro-movement of the volunteers.

The subjects must be filmed without their knowledge in order not to disturb the successful conduct of the acquisitions and the validity of the measures. Therefore, the camera must be hidden.

Then, these movements (such as brow-lowering, cheek-raising, eyelid tightening, nose wrinkling, upper-lip raising, oblique lip raising, eye closing etc…) are analyzed by our expert, specialized in neurosciences, in order to provide an index of tightness feelings.

Measuring the improvement of the comfort feeling by using a moisturizing product is now possible.