Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Volga bomb here with a classic episode from the archives. This one delves into the fascinating finding that the human faces temperature tends to change based on factors like stress level and concentration, and then how technology might harness this data to make some jobs safer, and whether that's a slippery slope. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren
Vogle bomb here. If you're anything like me, in moments of embarrassment, your face may flush and suddenly feel warm, But during times of intense concentration, the opposite is true. You're more likely to keep a cool head, or rather a cool face. According to new research, a study that evaluated facial thermal temperatures revealed that as a person engages in intense mental tasks, their face and in particular the
area around the nose, becomes cooler. The study, done by researchers at the University of Nottingham's Institute for Airspace Technology and published Indie journal Human Factors, paves the way towards applying thermal cameras in the workplace as a tool to assess how focused or possibly overwhelmed a worker might be, which would be a little much for many work environments, but could help prevent dangerous situations where people's safety depends
on a worker's concentration. One arena where a frazzled worker could become a deadly serious concern is in the cockpit. Passenger air traffic has doubled every fifteen years since the nineteen eighties and is expected to double again by four according to an Airbus Global Market forecast. The forecast predicts that pilots may be operating in increasingly congested skies and
more often without copilots. If air traffic controllers and others on the ground can detect through thermal facial imaging when a pilot is in a moment of intense concentration, they can offer to help, perhaps through remote control mechanisms, or at least not further distract the philot with unnecessary communications.
To evaluate how temperatures within a person's face change during periods of concentration, the researchers assembled fourteen students and faculty members at their university and had them complete computer based tasks of increasing difficulty. As the subjects completed each challenge, their breathing and pulse rates were recorded, and a thermal camera took detailed readings of temperature from previously mapped locations
on their faces. The researchers found that the link between the difficulty of each task and the coolness of the subject's facial temperatures was striking. Co author Alistair Campbell Ritchie of the University of Nottingham's Bioengineering Research Group set in a press release, we expected that mental demands on an operator would result in physiological changes, but the direct correlation between the workload and the skin temperature was very impressive
and counterintuitive. We were not expecting to see the face getting colder. The results were later replicated among a sample of pilots as they operated flights on simulated helicopters. We spoke with Sarah Sharple's, professor of human factors at the University of Nottingham and co author of the study. She said there are a couple of possible explanations for why the nose area in particular becomes cooler with increased concentration.
One is that breathing rate tends to increase as a person's mental workload increases, and more air traveling through the nose would decrease its temperature. The other is that during periods of high mental workload, blood diverges to the prefrontal cortex of the brain. That could mean, Sharples says, that more blood is flowing away from the nose and towards the brain. It could also be a combination of these factors. Sharples added, however, that there were a few exceptions to
the cool nose phenomenon. For that reason, she says, we would recommend, if this were to be used in a real world context, that there be some baseline testing to understand how close the relationship is in each individual between facial temperature and workload. We also spoke with Archangelo Merla, director of the Infrared Imaging Lab at the Institute for Advanced Biomedical technolog G at Italy's University of Kiati Pascuera, who agrees that baseline testing is critical when interpreting changes
in people's facial temperatures. Marla's research has shown that facial temperatures can reveal a range of conditions, from whether or not a person is lying, to feelings of fear or stirrings of lust. Marla has also found that the temperature of the nose often offers a key signal he said, reading nose temperature is an effective physiological tool as an indicator of a transition state, but the best approach is to take into account changes in temperature across the entire face.
Apart from pilots, Sharples and visions that thermal cameras could play a role in assessing workload and other settings, including in factories where workers interact with large machinery. But if the idea of your boss keeping tabs on you via a thermal camera feels intrusively, big brethery, you're not alone. Sharple's asks, for example, who would own a worker's thermal data,
the worker or the employer. She said, You can imagine a situation where thermal imaging data intended for real time monitoring could be stored and then presented during an end of your performance report. It's my feeling that these kinds of technologies will increase in the workplace, so we have to make absolutely sure we deal with all the ethical, legal, and social implications. Today's episode is based on the article Concentration makes the Face Grow Cooler on how Stuff works
dot com, written by Amanda Onion. Brain Stuff is production of My Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot com and it is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my Heart Radio visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.