A new app which monitors facial expressions to assess mood and then suggests the perfect food to lift the spirits, or quell¹ anxiety, has been developed by scientists at Oxford² University. 

 

牛津大学的科学家们近日研发出一款新应用，它能通过检测面部表情判断你的心情，进而为你推荐提振精神或平息焦虑的最佳食物。

 

Professor Charles Spence has teamed up with food delivery service 'Just Eat' to launch new 'mood mapping' technology which was trialled for the first time last weekend ahead of a roll out later this year.

 

The new app scans the face for signs of emotions, such as downturned lips and eyes and frown lines, and can often pick up on hidden feelings that a person may be ignoring. 

 

"Face mapping can provide a more accurate and objective assessment³ of a person's mood or emotional state than they can," said Prof Spence. 

 

"Often people are not able to say how they are feeling or just don't feel they want to. After all, we might know that we are in a bad mood, but not know why. 

 

"There is a growing body of evidence that demonstrates that your mood has a significant impact on your taste and smell - it can deaden or liven the effect of both - a reverse of this is also believed to be true, that food can have a number of affects on your mood." 

 

He said that mood and emotion can affect the 'sensory⁴ discriminatory aspects of tasting' which is why people often stop eating following a relationship break-up or when they are grieving because food simply does not taste as good as during happier times. 

 

"This is at the very cutting edge of what technology and science can do but in the future it is likely to become much more the norm," he added.

点击收听单词发音