Dr. Stephanos Ioannou, Department of Physiology at Alfaisal COM would like to share his latest publication on thermal imaging entitled:

“Seeing a Blush on the Visible and Invisible Spectrum: A Functional Thermal Infrared Imaging Study”

Stephanos Ioannou^1*, Paul H. Morris², Marc Baker², Vasudevi Reddy² and Vittorio Gallese^3,4

• ¹Department of Physiological Sciences, College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• ²Department of Psychology, Centre for Situated Action and Communication, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom
• ³Section of Human Physiology, Department of Neuroscience, Parma University, Parma, Italy
• ⁴Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London, London, United Kingdom

So far blushing has been examined in the context of a negative rather than a positive reinforcement where visual displays of a blush were based on subjective measures. The current study used infrared imaging to measure thermal patterns of the face while with the use of a video camera quantified on the visible spectrum alterations in skin color related to a compliment. To elicit a blush a three-phase dialog was adopted ending or starting with a compliment on a female sample (N = 22). When the dialog ended with a compliment results showed a linear increase in temperature for the cheek, and forehead whereas for the peri-orbital region a linear decrease was observed. The compliment phase marked the highest temperature on the chin independent of whether or not the experiment started with a compliment contrary to other facial regions, which did not show a significant change when the experiment started with a compliment. Analyses on the visible spectrum showed that skin pigmentation was getting deep red in the compliment condition compared to the serious and social dialog conditions for both the forehead and the cheeks. No significant association was observed between temperature values and erythrocyte displays on the forehead and cheek. Heat is the physiological product of an arousing social scenario, however, preconceived notions about blushing propensity seem to drive erythrocyte displays and not necessarily conscious awareness of somatic sensations.

The full article can be accessed through the following link:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00525/full

We congratulate Dr. Ioannou and his team for their interesting work and wish them a bright and successful procession in the thermal imaging field of research.