Elsevier

Physiology & Behavior

Volume 84, Issue 5, 13 April 2005, Pages 783-790
Physiology & Behavior

Decrease in nasal temperature of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) in negative emotional state

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2005.03.009Get rights and content

Abstract

We established an infrared thermographic system for the detection of emotion-related temperature changes in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). We continuously measured temperatures of various facial regions of four rhesus monkeys during the presentation of a potentially ‘threatening’ person, i.e., a person in a laboratory coat with a catching net, who entered the experimental room and approached the monkeys. The temperatures were also measured before and after the presentation of the ‘stimulation period.’ The temperature of the nasal region decreased significantly within 10–30 s, and continued to decrease throughout the stimulation period. During this period, the monkeys frequently expressed silent bared-teeth face, staring open-mouth face, and lip-smacking, all of which were expressions of a negative emotion. Assuming that the monkeys experience the negative emotion when viewing the potentially threatening stimulus, we conclude that the decrease in nasal skin temperature is relevant to the alteration of the emotional state. The present findings suggest that nasal temperature can be a reliable and accurate indicator of a change from neutral to negative in emotional state of non-human primates.

Section snippets

Subjects

The subjects were four female rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta, 5–8 years old). Each monkey was housed in an individual cage but could make auditory and visual contact with other monkeys in the cage room. Food (monkey chow) and water were provided ad libitum in the cage. Each monkey had participated in one or two cognitive and neurophysiological studies for more than 2 years. The monkeys were all trained and habituated to a custom-designed primate chair.

All of the experiments were performed in

Results

A photograph of one of the monkeys and a typical facial thermogram that was obtained for this monkey at the end of the pre-stimulation period are shown in Fig. 1A and B, respectively. As shown in Fig. 1B, the eyelids and adjacent regions, and the region under the nares showed relatively high skin temperatures (red and orange areas), whereas the upper part of nose showed a relatively low skin temperature (black areas). In contrast, the temperature of the entire nose was lower in the

Discussion

We examined the relation of negative emotional state to facial skin temperature in four rhesus monkeys. In the present study, we applied an infrared thermographic (IRT) system to examine the emotional responses of the monkeys. We found that with the use of well-trained monkeys, it was possible to visualize the temperature changes in the face and to calculate their spatiotemporal distribution. We also found that decreases in the nasal skin temperature during the stimulation period were highly

Acknowledgements

Katsura Nakayama, Shunji Goto, Koji Kuraoka, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Japan. Katsuki Nakamura, National Institute of Neuroscience, NCNP, Kodaira, Japan, Primate Research Institute, Kyobo University, Inuyama, Japan, and CREST, JST, Kawaguchi, Japan.

The authors thank Prof. Shozo Kojima for his support. This research was supported by a grant for COE research (10CE2005) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan, and CREST from

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