Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Volga bomb here with a classic
Speaker 1: episode from the archives. This one delves into the fascinating
Speaker 1: finding that the human faces temperature tends to change based
Speaker 1: on factors like stress level and concentration, and then how
Speaker 1: technology might harness this data to make some jobs safer,
Speaker 1: and whether that's a slippery slope. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren
Speaker 1: Vogle bomb here. If you're anything like me, in moments
Speaker 1: of embarrassment, your face may flush and suddenly feel warm,
Speaker 1: But during times of intense concentration, the opposite is true.
Speaker 1: You're more likely to keep a cool head, or rather
Speaker 1: a cool face. According to new research, a study that
Speaker 1: evaluated facial thermal temperatures revealed that as a person engages
Speaker 1: in intense mental tasks, their face and in particular the
Speaker 1: area around the nose, becomes cooler. The study, done by
Speaker 1: researchers at the University of Nottingham's Institute for Airspace Technology
Speaker 1: and published Indie journal Human Factors, paves the way towards
Speaker 1: applying thermal cameras in the workplace as a tool to
Speaker 1: assess how focused or possibly overwhelmed a worker might be,
Speaker 1: which would be a little much for many work environments,
Speaker 1: but could help prevent dangerous situations where people's safety depends
Speaker 1: on a worker's concentration. One arena where a frazzled worker
Speaker 1: could become a deadly serious concern is in the cockpit.
Speaker 1: Passenger air traffic has doubled every fifteen years since the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and is expected to double again by four
Speaker 1: according to an Airbus Global Market forecast. The forecast predicts
Speaker 1: that pilots may be operating in increasingly congested skies and
Speaker 1: more often without copilots. If air traffic controllers and others
Speaker 1: on the ground can detect through thermal facial imaging when
Speaker 1: a pilot is in a moment of intense concentration, they
Speaker 1: can offer to help, perhaps through remote control mechanisms, or
Speaker 1: at least not further distract the philot with unnecessary communications.
Speaker 1: To evaluate how temperatures within a person's face change during
Speaker 1: periods of concentration, the researchers assembled fourteen students and faculty
Speaker 1: members at their university and had them complete computer based
Speaker 1: tasks of increasing difficulty. As the subjects completed each challenge,
Speaker 1: their breathing and pulse rates were recorded, and a thermal
Speaker 1: camera took detailed readings of temperature from previously mapped locations
Speaker 1: on their faces. The researchers found that the link between
Speaker 1: the difficulty of each task and the coolness of the
Speaker 1: subject's facial temperatures was striking. Co author Alistair Campbell Ritchie
Speaker 1: of the University of Nottingham's Bioengineering Research Group set in
Speaker 1: a press release, we expected that mental demands on an
Speaker 1: operator would result in physiological changes, but the direct correlation
Speaker 1: between the workload and the skin temperature was very impressive
Speaker 1: and counterintuitive. We were not expecting to see the face
Speaker 1: getting colder. The results were later replicated among a sample
Speaker 1: of pilots as they operated flights on simulated helicopters. We
Speaker 1: spoke with Sarah Sharple's, professor of human factors at the
Speaker 1: University of Nottingham and co author of the study. She
Speaker 1: said there are a couple of possible explanations for why
Speaker 1: the nose area in particular becomes cooler with increased concentration.
Speaker 1: One is that breathing rate tends to increase as a
Speaker 1: person's mental workload increases, and more air traveling through the
Speaker 1: nose would decrease its temperature. The other is that during
Speaker 1: periods of high mental workload, blood diverges to the prefrontal
Speaker 1: cortex of the brain. That could mean, Sharples says, that
Speaker 1: more blood is flowing away from the nose and towards
Speaker 1: the brain. It could also be a combination of these factors.
Speaker 1: Sharples added, however, that there were a few exceptions to
Speaker 1: the cool nose phenomenon. For that reason, she says, we
Speaker 1: would recommend, if this were to be used in a
Speaker 1: real world context, that there be some baseline testing to
Speaker 1: understand how close the relationship is in each individual between
Speaker 1: facial temperature and workload. We also spoke with Archangelo Merla,
Speaker 1: director of the Infrared Imaging Lab at the Institute for
Speaker 1: Advanced Biomedical technolog G at Italy's University of Kiati Pascuera,
Speaker 1: who agrees that baseline testing is critical when interpreting changes
Speaker 1: in people's facial temperatures. Marla's research has shown that facial
Speaker 1: temperatures can reveal a range of conditions, from whether or
Speaker 1: not a person is lying, to feelings of fear or
Speaker 1: stirrings of lust. Marla has also found that the temperature
Speaker 1: of the nose often offers a key signal he said,
Speaker 1: reading nose temperature is an effective physiological tool as an
Speaker 1: indicator of a transition state, but the best approach is
Speaker 1: to take into account changes in temperature across the entire face.
Speaker 1: Apart from pilots, Sharples and visions that thermal cameras could
Speaker 1: play a role in assessing workload and other settings, including
Speaker 1: in factories where workers interact with large machinery. But if
Speaker 1: the idea of your boss keeping tabs on you via
Speaker 1: a thermal camera feels intrusively, big brethery, you're not alone.
Speaker 1: Sharple's asks, for example, who would own a worker's thermal data,
Speaker 1: the worker or the employer. She said, You can imagine
Speaker 1: a situation where thermal imaging data intended for real time
Speaker 1: monitoring could be stored and then presented during an end
Speaker 1: of your performance report. It's my feeling that these kinds
Speaker 1: of technologies will increase in the workplace, so we have
Speaker 1: to make absolutely sure we deal with all the ethical, legal,
Speaker 1: and social implications. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: Concentration makes the Face Grow Cooler on how Stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, written by Amanda Onion. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and it is produced by Tyler Klang. Four
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