Emoticons and Neuroscience

Do emoticons have a neuroscience?  How are they different than the use of text?  I thought I had noticed that there were fewer of them out in the wild these days.  But my experience is skewed.  In FastCoDesign:  " ...  Neuroscience has started to embrace emoticons, too--a line of research we humbly suggest using (@):-) to symbolize hence forth. "Emoticons are a part of communication for a great many people," psychologist Owen Churches of Flinders University, in Australia, tells Co.Design. "Social neuroscientists should study the way we socialize now." Though in its infancy, such work has already produced an intriguing insight: Our brains might be adapting to an emoticon-filled world by processing them differently. ... "