When I first read the Article "Making Mona Lisa Smile" I was sheocked at how this technology was able to read emotions off of a painting. It described her as 83 percent happy, 9 percent discusted, 6 percent fearful and 2 percent angry. This is all identified by software innovated by Prof. Thomas Huang, in collaboration with Prof. Nicu Sebe. Dr. Huang and his colleaugue are experts at developing better ways for humans and computers to communicate. I think it's a good idea becuase it could help people better understand the emotions of people who don't communicate as much.

"The facial expressions for each emotion are universal" says Dr. Huang, "even though individuals often show varying degrees of expression" Using video imagery the new emotion-recoognition software tracks these facial movements; in a real face or a painted face of Mona Lisa. This sofware can also identify mixed emotions; each expression is compared against a neutral face (showing no emotion). This really shows how much a computer can do. Dr. Huang said "A classroom computer could recognize when a student is becoming confused or bored", "Then it could modify the lesson, like an effective human instructor." Your home PC can't handle complex algorithms used to decode Mona Lisa's smile. But we can write down simple instructions that "encode different emotions.

I think that this is a great step towards the future and the possibilities could be endless when understanding emotions. It could not only benefit yourself, but others around you in how your feeling.