When a person lies, they experience a “Pinocchio
effect“, which increase the temperature around the nose and in the orbital muscle in the inner corner of the eye.
Thermography is a technique based-on body temperature that’s applied in many fields like general industry, the building industry & medicine.
Thermographic cameras have a good range of uses like measuring energy loss in buildings, indicating respiratory diseases in bovine animals, or rabies in raccoons.
Thermography was developed in the USA during the World War II to detect the enemy (night vision).
Excitement is Same in Both Men & Women
The University of Granada researchers, Emilio Gómez Milán & Elvira Salazar López are pioneers in applying thermography in the field of Psychology and they obtained very innovative & interesting results.
Scientists discovered, when a mental effort is made (performing difficult tasks, being interrogated on a particular event or lying) face temperature changes.
When we lie, temperature around our nose raises & a brain element called “insula“ is activated.
The insula is a component of brain reward system and it only activates, when we experience real feelings (called “qualias“).
The insula is involved in the detection & regulation of body temperature. Therefore, there’s a strong negative correlation between insula activity & temperature increase: the more active the insule (the greater the feeling) the lower the body temperature changes & vice-versa, the researchers state.
The Thermal Footprint of Flamenco
Researchers determined the thermal footprint of aerobic exercise & different dance modalities like ballet.
When a person is dancing flamenco the temperature in their buttocks drops & it increases in their forearms. That’s the thermal footprint of flamenco and each & every dance modality features a specific thermal footprint, professor Salazar explains.
The researchers demonstrated that temperature asymmetries in both side of the body and local temperature changes are related to the physical, mental & emotional status of the subject.
The thermogram is a somatic marker of subjective, or mental states and allows-us see what a person is feeling or thinking, professor Salazar states.
Finally, thermography is beneficial for evaluating emotions (since the face thermal pattern is different) & identifying emotional contagion.
For instance, when a highly empathic person sees other person having an electric discharge in their forearm, they become infected by their suffering & temperature in their forearm increases.
In patients with certain neurological disease like multiple sclerosis, the body doesn’t properly regulate temperature, which can-be detected by a thermogram.
Thermography also can be applied to determine body fat patterns, which is greatly useful in weight loss & training programs.
It also can be applied to assess body temperature in celiac patients & in patients with anorexia, etc.
