Neurological disorders affecting body language

Question

Are there neurological disorders which do not affect the emotions per se but affect how they are expressed by the body?
Say, normally positive emotions are associated with the tips of the lips facing upwards; do some people express positive emotions in different ways?
Alternatively, when an average person discovers something funny for some period of time they breathe abnormally (so-called laughter); could some people's reaction entail e.g. blinking instead of that?

Arnon Weinberg · Answer

This is usually referred to as emotional expression or affect display, which can be verbal as well as non-verbal, whereas body language is exclusively non-verbal, and not exclusive to emotion.
This function can certainly go wrong:

There are a few disorders that show deficiency in emotional expression
and response. These include alexithymia, autism, hypomimia and
involuntary expression disorder.

And also:

Disorders involving ... reduced affect displays most commonly include
schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder, depression, autism and
persons with traumatic brain injuries.

However, afflicted individuals do not typically substitute one expression for another - they usually either do not express some emotions (eg, Spock, who would have been diagnosed with alexithymia), or they express some emotions inappropriately (eg, the Joker, who presumably suffers from PBA).  It's unlikely that someone would express happiness by tapping their foot, or laughter by blinking their eyes.

Neurological disorders affecting body language

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