(Press-News.org) BUFFALO, N.Y. — A joint study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, the University at Buffalo, and the University of Toronto has found that a computer–vision system can distinguish between real or faked expressions of pain more accurately than can humans.
This ability has obvious uses for uncovering pain malingering — fabricating or exaggerating the symptoms of pain for a variety of motives — but the system also could be used to detect deceptive actions in the realms of security, psychopathology, job screening, medicine and law.
The study, "Automatic Decoding of Deceptive Pain Expressions," is published in the latest issue of Current Biology.
The authors are Marian Bartlett, PhD, research professor, Institute for Neural Computation, University of California, San Diego; Gwen C. Littlewort, PhD, co-director of the institute's Machine Perception Laboratory; Mark G. Frank, PhD, professor of communication, University at Buffalo, and Kang Lee, PhD, Dr. Erick Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto.
A photo of Frank is available at:
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2014/04/008.html
The study employed two experiments with a total of 205 human observers who were asked to assess the veracity of expressions of pain in video clips of individuals, some of whom were being subjected to the cold presser test in which a hand is immersed in ice water to measure pain tolerance, and of others who were faking their painful expressions.
"Human subjects could not discriminate real from faked expressions of pain more frequently than would be expected by chance," Frank says. "Even after training, they were accurate only 55 percent of the time. The computer system, however, was accurate 85 percent of the time."
Bartlett noted that the computer system "managed to detect distinctive, dynamic features of facial expressions that people missed. Human observers just aren't very good at telling real from faked expressions of pain."
The researchers employed the computer expression recognition toolbox (CERT), an end-to-end system for fully automated facial-expression recognition that operates in real time. It was developed by Bartlett, Littlewort, Frank and others to assess the accuracy of machine versus human vision.
They found that machine vision was able to automatically distinguish deceptive facial signals from genuine facial signals by extracting information from spatiotemporal facial-expression signals that humans either cannot or do not extract.
"In highly social species such as humans," says Lee, "faces have evolved to convey rich information, including expressions of emotion and pain. And, because of the way our brains are built, people can simulate emotions they're not actually experiencing so successfully that they fool other people. The computer is much better at spotting the subtle differences between involuntary and voluntary facial movements."
Frank adds, "Our findings demonstrate that automated systems like CERT may analyze the dynamics of facial behavior at temporal resolutions previously not feasible using manual coding methods."
Bartlet says this approach illuminates basic questions pertaining to many social situations in which the behavioral fingerprint of neural control systems may be relevant.
"As with causes of pain, these scenarios also generate strong emotions, along with attempts to minimize, mask and fake such emotions, which may involve 'dual control' of the face," Bartlett says.
"Dual control of the face means that the signal for our spontaneous felt emotion expressions originate in different areas in the brain than our deliberately posed emotion expressions," Frank explains, "and they proceed through different motor systems that account for subtle appearance, and in the case of this study, dynamic movement factors."
The computer-vision system, Bartlett says, "can be applied to detect states in which the human face may provide important clues as to health, physiology, emotion or thought, such as drivers' expressions of sleepiness, students' expressions of attention and comprehension of lectures, or responses to treatment of affective disorders."
The single most predictive feature of falsified expressions, the study showed, is how and when the mouth opens and closes. Fakers' mouths open with less variation and too regularly. The researchers say further investigations will explore whether such over-regularity is a general feature of fake express
INFORMATION: END
Ouch! Computer system spots fake expressions of pain better than people
The system may also be used to detect deceptive actions
2014-04-03
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
New study casts doubt on heart regeneration in mammals
2014-04-03
The mammalian heart has generally been considered to lack the ability to repair itself after injury, but a 2011 study in newborn mice challenged this view, providing evidence for complete regeneration after resection of 10% of the apex, the lowest part of the heart. In a study published by Cell Press in Stem Cell Reports on April 3, 2014, researchers attempted to replicate these recent findings but failed to uncover any evidence of complete heart regeneration in newborn mice that underwent apex resection.
"Our results question the usefulness of the apex resection model ...
Hummingbirds' 22-million-year-old history of remarkable change is far from complete
2014-04-03
The first comprehensive map of hummingbirds' 22-million-year-old family tree—reconstructed based on careful analysis of 284 of the world's 338 known species—tells a story of rapid and ongoing diversification. The decade-long study reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 3 also helps to explain how today's hummingbirds came to live where they do.
Part of the secret to the birds' remarkable success lies in the formation of nine principal groups or clades, hummingbirds' unique relationship to flowering plants, and the birds' continued spread into new ...
Lactase persistence alleles reveal ancestry of southern African Khoe pastoralists
2014-04-03
In a new study a team of researchers lead from Uppsala University show how lactase persistence variants tell the story about the ancestry of the Khoe people in southern Africa. The team concludes that pastoralist practices were brought to southern Africa by a small group of migrants from eastern Africa. The study is published in Current Biology today.
"This is really an exciting time for African genetics. Up until now, routes of human migration in Africa were inferred mostly based on linguistics and archaeology, now we can use genetics to test these hypotheses." says ...
Cancer and the Goldilocks effect
2014-04-03
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that too little or too much of an enzyme called SRPK1 promotes cancer by disrupting a regulatory event critical for many fundamental cellular processes, including proliferation.
The findings are published in the current online issue of Molecular Cell.
The family of SRPK kinases was first discovered by Xiang-Dong Fu, PhD, professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego in 1994. In 2012, Fu and colleagues uncovered that SPRK1 was a key signal transducer ...
Study helps unravel the tangled origin of ALS
2014-04-03
MADISON, Wis. — By studying nerve cells that originated in patients with a severe neurological disease, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has pinpointed an error in protein formation that could be the root of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Also called Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS causes paralysis and death. According to the ALS Association, as many as 30,000 Americans are living with ALS.
After a genetic mutation was discovered in a small group of ALS patients, scientists transferred that gene to animals and began to search for drugs that might treat those ...
Patient stem cells help identify common problem in ALS
2014-04-03
Harvard stem cell scientists have discovered that a recently approved medication for epilepsy may possibly be a meaningful treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—Lou Gehrig's disease, a uniformly fatal neurodegenerative disorder. The researchers are now collaborating with Massachusetts General Hospital to design an initial clinical trial testing the safety of the treatment in ALS patients.
The investigators all caution that a great deal needs to be done to assure the safety and efficacy of the treatment in ALS patients, before physicians should start offering ...
Tumor suppressor gene TP53 mutated in 90 percent of most common childhood bone tumor
2014-04-03
(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – April 3, 2014) – The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital—Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project found mutations in the tumor suppressor gene TP53 in 90 percent of osteosarcomas, suggesting the alteration plays a key role early in development of the bone cancer. The research was published today online ahead of print in the journal Cell Reports.
The discovery that TP53 is altered in nearly every osteosarcoma also helps to explain a long-standing paradox in osteosarcoma treatment, which is why at standard doses radiation therapy is largely ...
ER doctors commonly miss more strokes among women, minorities and younger patients
2014-04-03
Analyzing federal health care data, a team of researchers led by a Johns Hopkins specialist concluded that doctors overlook or discount the early signs of potentially disabling strokes in tens of thousands of American each year, a large number of them visitors to emergency rooms complaining of dizziness or headaches.
The findings from the medical records review, reported online April 3 in the journal Diagnosis, show that women, minorities and people under the age of 45 who have these symptoms of stroke were significantly more likely to be misdiagnosed in the week prior ...
Jamming a protein signal forces cancer cells to devour themselves
2014-04-03
HOUSTON -- Under stress from chemotherapy or radiation, some cancer cells dodge death by consuming a bit of themselves, allowing them to essentially sleep through treatment and later awaken as tougher, resistant disease.
Interfering with a single cancer-promoting protein and its receptor can turn this resistance mechanism into lethal, runaway self-cannibalization, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report in the journal Cell Reports.
"Prolactin is a potent growth factor for many types of cancers, including ovarian cancer," said senior author ...
Dopamine and hippocampus
2014-04-03
Montreal, April 3, 2014 – Bruno Giros, PhD, a researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, has demonstrated, for the first time, the role that dopamine plays in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. Published in Biological Psychiatry, this discovery opens the door to a better understanding of psychiatric diseases, such as schizophrenia.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a central role in brain function, and many mental illnesses involve an imbalance in this chemical. ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Tools to succeed: Learning support for new nurses
A breakthrough in green hydrogen peroxide production: KIST develops carbon catalyst utilizing airborne oxygen
Travellers: beware of Oropouche virus. Is it the next Zika?
No increased death rates, admission differences for people experiencing homelessness with severe COVID-19
Optimizing public placement of naloxone kits to save lives
Burden of cardiovascular disease caused by extreme heat in Australia to more than double by 2050
Who does Darth Vader vote for? Not the same party as Harry Potter
Ground breaking advances in construction robotics in extreme environments unveiled in review
New strategies to enhance chiral optical signals unveiled
Cambridge research uncovers powerful virtual reality treatment for speech anxiety
2025 Gut Microbiota for Health World Summit to spotlight groundbreaking research
International survey finds that support for climate interventions is tied to being hopeful and worried about climate change
Cambridge scientist launches free VR platform that eliminates the fear of public speaking
Open-Source AI matches top proprietary model in solving tough medical cases
Good fences make good neighbors (with carnivores)
NRG Oncology trial supports radiotherapy alone following radical hysterectomy should remain the standard of care for early-stage, intermediate-risk cervical cancer
Introducing our new cohort of AGA Future Leaders
Sharks are dying at alarming rates, mostly due to fishing. Retention bans may help
Engineering excellence: Engineers with ONR ties elected to renowned scientific academy
New CRISPR-based diagnostic test detects pathogens in blood without amplification
Immunotherapy may boost KRAS-targeted therapy in pancreatic cancer
Growing solar: Optimizing agrivoltaic systems for crops and clean energy
Scientists discover how to reactivate cancer’s molecular “kill switch”
YouTube influencers: gaming’s best friend or worst enemy?
uOttawa scientists use light to unlock secret of atoms
NJIT mathematician to help map Earth's last frontier with Navy grant
NASA atmospheric wave-studying mission releases data from first 3,000 orbits
‘Microlightning’ in water droplets may have sparked life on Earth
Smoke from wildland-urban interface fires more deadly than remote wildfires
What’s your body really worth? New AI model reveals your true biological age from 5 drops of blood
[Press-News.org] Ouch! Computer system spots fake expressions of pain better than peopleThe system may also be used to detect deceptive actions