Facial expression can tell thousand words.

If you believe only words can communicate, think again, for scientists have claimed animated facial expressions may be more worthy.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tubingen, Germany, found that humans are able to recognise facial expressions in motion -- for example, in a movie -- far better than in a static photograph.

"A facial expression can state a lot and we are able to classify an expression much better when it moves naturally rather than when it is frozen in a photograph," they said.

According to the researchers, one needs to see the expression at least for 100 milliseconds to understand it properly. If the visual sequence is shorter, our brain is less capable of interpreting the facial motion.

" Facial expressions, like gestures and body motion, are a dynamic phenomenon and need to be investigated with the help of video sequences in order to get a better understanding of the dynamic information that is being processed," Dr Christian Wallraven, co-author of the study, was quoted as saying by ScienceDaily.

According to the study, some expressions rely on changes in head orientation, for example, a nod or a shake of the head, others on the complex deformation of facial parts, such as wrinkling our nose to signal disgust or a frown.

The scientists showed pictures of humans with different expressions to the participants in order to examine to what extent we are able to recognise - the mood of a person with whom we are interacting - based on facial expressions. Among them were simple, emotional expressions, such as happy and sad, but also more complex ones such as agreement, confusion, or surprise, which are usually used to emphasise or modify statements in a conversation.

To investigate whether these expressions are recognised more easily in motion or in static pictures, a short video sequence of various expressions was shown to the participants and then asked to identify the expressions.

In further experiments, the video sequences were converted to a series of photographs that was shown to the participants. Nevertheless, the expressions were still recognised more accurately in the video sequence.

The results show that neither pictures, nor motion alone are of importance, but that we need a combination of the correct temporal sequence and the correct facial motion to reliably interpret facial expressions.

"Our results also have implications for the area of computer animation, since its goal is to create artificial avatars and facial animations that are able to communicate realistically and believably," Wallraven added.

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