- Title: Thermographic camera declares if you are in love
- Date: 24th May 2016
- Summary: PHOTOGRAPH OF STUDENT WITH GIRLFRIEND
- Embargoed: 8th June 2016 14:40
- Keywords: thermal camera thermographic camera thermal imaging University of Granada
- Location: GRANADA, SPAIN
- City: GRANADA, SPAIN
- Country: Spain
- Topics: Science
- Reuters ID: LVA00C4J63QSB
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: University of Granada (UGR) researchers have developed what they call an objective method of determining whether a person is in love, by observing their changing temperature using a thermographic camera.
The team, from the Research Centre for the Mind, Brain and Behaviour (CIMCYC), has determined the thermal changes experienced in people's bodies when they look at photographs of the person they love.
In laboratory tests they examined 60 men and women between 24 and 47 years old who had started an intimate relationship in recent weeks and declared themselves to be in love.
Having been placed in a room for 20 minutes to become acclimatised to its temperature, volunteers in the main group watched on a computer a series of photographs of themselves with their new partners. By contrast, the control group saw a series of images of friends.
In some of the tests UGR researchers used a 'cold stress test', consisting of volunteers placing their dominant (writing) hand in a bowl of zero degrees Celsius water for two minutes. Their hand was then dried and filmed for six minutes, the time necessary for a healthy person to recover the hand's normal temperature.
Other volunteers were stripped to their underpants and filmed for the same time period, in order to create a thermal body map.
Results showed that being in love increased the temperature of volunteers' cheeks, nose, forehead, area around the mouth and hands, by two degrees Celsius, but decreased temperature for chest and abdomen. The temperature of volunteers' arms and legs remained the same.
Lead researcher Alex Moline explained the theory while examining the image of the dominant hand of a female volunteer.
He told Reuters that in relation to the thermal imagery for volunteers in love, "there is a faster recovery with the hand. You can see the temperature here (on the side), so when you compare this image with the image that we have seen with (her looking at) friends this recovery is faster. The change is clear. We can show it also in parts of the face."
According to UGR Professor of experimental psychology, Francisco Tornay, "the temperature is related to the state of the sympathetic or the parasympathetic systems, and how you feel and how excited you are, and it's very sensitive and very simple to detect and measure the working of the peripheral nervous system in general."
Tornay co-directed the research with Professor Emilio Gomez Milan. The team believes the UGR technology could be integrated into thermographic mobile phones, allowing users to ascertain the feelings of partners or tell if they are lying.
"We think that if we really go on to analyse thermographical images in a more detailed way, pixel by pixel and frame by frame, in short videos we can use machine learning algorithms and we think we can detect or predict to some extent the emotional state of people just by taking a video of them," said Tornay.
In previous years the same research team applied thermography to determine the so-called 'Pinocchio effect', showing that the temperature of people's nose changes when they lie.
"When people lie their temperature is different if they have, depending on if they are lying or telling the truth," said Moline. "So we can detect it with a thermographic camera. Also we are researching about moral dilemmas. So when people are thinking about the solution of these dilemmas they have strained temperature changes of the body."
Moline says that producing a thermal map of feelings will provide an objective way of determining emotion.
"We think it's very important because we would have an objective methodology to detect different conditions, for example love or when a person is lying, so it's very important because it's objective, it's not a subjective methodology," he said.
Thermographic mobile phones are a nascent technology but one which manufacturers believe could have various uses.
In February British firm Bullitt launched what they called the world's first thermal imaging phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The Cat S60 smartphone, developed in conjunction with construction equipment maker Caterpillar and premium technology company FLIR Systems Inc., is aimed at tradespeople and will be available in June, retailing at $599 USD.
The roots of thermography date back to 1700 BC. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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