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5. Categorization with Temperature Distribution of the Human Hand Surface
Hideyuki Kokubo, Mikio Yamamoto, Masahiko Hirasawa and Junko Taniguchi
Keywords: skin surface, palm, 2-dimensional pattern, categorization, thermal vision
It is known that serotonin of the pineal body increases when NATase activities are blocked by external qi. A rise of serotonin concentration in blood leads to a blood flow increase and the temperature of the body surface becomes higher than that during rest. Particularly in studies by thermal vision, the temperature of the human hand surface is often measured as an indicator of the peripheral blood flow change. However, the degree of the increase of temperature is assumed to be dependent on differences of the peripheral blood flow distribution in the skin. These differences show variations of the patterns of temperature distribution of the body surface. The authors surveyed patterns of 2-dimensional temperature distributions on the palm surface of 81 healthy volunteers during rest. The sampled population showed that females' had an average temperature of 32.4 degree, and it was 0.6 degree higher than that of males (p<0.01). There was no correlation between age and temperature (r=0.07). Differences in patterns of 2-dimensional distributions showed all data can be classified into four groups (Fig. 6): 1) high temperature in the middle of the palm (C); 2) high temperature at both thenar and hypothenar eminences (TH); 3) intermediate type (CT); 4) combination type (CTH). Average temperatures differed 2-3 degrees for the types, but not for sex in each type. There was a weak correlation between age and temperature for the group of high temperature at both eminences (r=0.32), but other groups had no correlation (r<0.2).
Publications:
1) Kokubo H, Taniguchi J, Yamamoto M and Hirasawa M: J. Intl. Soc. Life Info. Sci., 16, 247-254, 1998.
