Side Effect Ideas

Enhanced Body Language Processing

Enhanced Body Language Processing

Rank C (Enhanced Senses

The influence of trion on the prefrontal cortex resulted in a heightened understanding of body language and expressions. The individual must first have an understanding of what the motion, gesture, or expression is implying for them to have a full understanding of what they are seeing. For example, the individual may see a person shift their foot slightly to the right in a criminal investigation when asked about the crime, but unless they knew that was a sign of lying they would not know the meaning behind it. 

The individual has an ingrained understanding of microexpressions and gestures, such as manipulators, illustrators, and emblems. Microexpressions are expressions that last for half a second or less. Manipulator gestures are hard-to-control movements in which one part of the body grooms, massages, rubs, holds, pinches, picks, scratches, or otherwise manipulates another body part. For example; people tend to move forward with interest or anger and backward with fear or disgust. Illustrator gestures are what some people may refer to colloquially as "talking with your hands," as they "illustrate" what we are saying. Illustrators occur during speech as it is spoken. They are used to provide emphasis, to make an action the speech is describing, to trace the flow of thought, to show spatial relationships, or to draw a picture in the air. For example; illustrators decrease when someone is being cautious about what's being said, such as when lying or feeling nervous. Emblem gestures are gestures that have very precise meanings known within an ethnic, cultural, or sub-cultural group. Emblems are used as deliberately and consciously as spoken words and are unique in that they can be used in conjunction with or in place of words. For example; giving someone the middle finger or shrugging off the shoulders.

Applications:

The individual could use the side effect to predict opponents' attacks. If they were familiarised with the lead-up movements to a certain attack then they could accurately predict what that opponent would do next. If it was swinging a sword the individual could predict that and react accordingly and counterattack. Or it could be the realisation that the opponent was going to flee and the individual could block off the route. The individual would also be able to detect lies, as long as they knew the tells. Since they are extremely proficient at recognizing microexpressions and gestures, this would come quite easily to them. As described above microexpressions, manipulator gestures, and illustrator gestures can all be used to determine if someone is trying to deceive. The individual would also be extremely proficient at lip reading as they would know the movements of each word in correlation to the mouth. 

Limitations:

One limitation could be that it would only be able to be used on humans, as human gestures are learned due to the species we surround ourselves with. However, the individual could train themselves or be trained to learn the microexpressions and gestures of other species, it would be very tedious and difficult though and certainly would not be able to be used with the same proficiency as on humans. Another limitation comes up with the possibility of the side effect being used against the individual through misleading gestures and microexpressions. If someone is extremely good at controlling their movements and expressions they could fool the individual by using fake movements and microexpressions. Also, the usage of attack prediction would only work in a battle if the individual's speed and reflexes are fast enough to react to the perceived attack or intended movement. 

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