Feel like you’ve been overdoing it a bit lately? Well, it looks like there’s an easy way to tell whether you’ve been working too much – and it involves the temperature of your nose.
Yep, we know it sounds weird, but scientists from the University of Nottingham now believe that having a cold nose could indicate that you’re brain is thinking too hard…
Using thermal imaging cameras, the team studied the faces of 14 volunteers while they carried out mental tasks.
And, weirdly enough, those who were left feeling overwhelmed during the experiment saw their nose temperature drop by an average of 1oC.
The team, whose work was published in the journal Human Factors, now believe this temperature change signals that the brain is working too hard, and diverting more blood to its neurons to help cope under pressure, the Independent reports.
And your extremities, including your hooter, are the first areas to be affected because it takes more energy for blood to be pumped into them, apparently.
Researcher Dr Sarah Sharples said in a statement: ‘The measurement of workload without needing to interrupt people to ask them to report how busy they are, has been challenging human factors specialists for many years.
‘By bringing together our expertise in bioengineering, human factors and machine learning, we have developed a much better understanding of how physical changes associated with workloads manifest themselves as physiological symptoms, and how these symptoms translate into the parameters that we can measure.’
Fellow study author Dr Alastair Campbell Ritchie added: ‘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 counter-intuitive – we were not expecting to see the face getting colder.’
Anyway, next time you’re looking for an excuse to take a break, you know what to check…
