Mona Lisa's smile a mystery no more

I'm interested in seeing if there's a physio/psycho/neurological differences between people who find her smile mysterious and people who don't, because to me, the only mysterious thing about her smile is that the media makes such a big deal of it.

When we fake a smile, we smile with our lips but not our eyes. The Mona Lisa is doing the reverse: her eyes are smiling but her mouth is actually quite neutral.<p>There are also lines in her cheeks that make it look like her mouth curving upwards, but the lips are actually quite flat.<p>Try looking directly at her eyes, then down at her mouth. Her expression seems to morph.

So they're claiming it's something like this?<p><a href="http://www.grand-illusions.com/opticalillusions/angry_and_calm/" rel="nofollow">http://www.grand-illusions.com/opticalillusions/angry_and_ca...</a>

If I unfocus my eyes and stare at her long enough I can see a horse.

Reminds me a little of the SIGGRAPH paper on hybrid images, where the distance at which you view an image determines, for example, whether you see a smiling or frowning person:<p><a href="http://cvcl.mit.edu/hybridimage.htm" rel="nofollow">http://cvcl.mit.edu/hybridimage.htm</a>

I always wondered if DaVinci wanted that effect or it just "happened".

This article is about a story from a few years ago. The way they talk about it as though it's something new is very misleading.