Researchers at New York University have created a wearable system that can measure electrodermal activity, a property of the skin that is influenced by mental states, such as stress or arousal. The system is called Multimodal Intelligent Noninvasive Brain State Decoder for Wearable Adaptive Closed-Loop Architectures (MINDWATCH) and can assess electrodermal activity by measuring skin conductance. An algorithm developed by the researchers models the activity of sweat glands in the skin as a way to assess changes in electrodermal activity and then infers what this means for the user’s state of mind. The technology has a wide range of potential applications, from monitoring pain and distress in nonverbal patients such as infants, to protecting mental health and improving engagement with life.
We are usually very aware of our own mental and emotional states, although paying more attention to these matters is likely to help us reduce stress levels before they spiral out of control. However, for those around us, it can often be difficult to determine what emotions another person is experiencing. Nonverbal people, especially, cannot easily express their emotions, making it particularly difficult to determine what they are experiencing.
Providing an objective window into our own mental states would go a long way in reducing stress and maintaining good mental health. For example, if you are experiencing acute stress, such a device could alert you and prompt you to take a short break. The technology could be very useful in enabling people to better manage conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and autism. It could also be a game changer for non-speaking patients, such as newborn babies, who may experience pain and agitation without being noticed by medical staff. This latest wearable technology aims to assess a person’s mental state, and it does so by measuring electrodermal activity, an electrical property of the skin that is affected by mental states such as arousal or stress.
“Inferring autonomic nervous system activation from wearable devices in real time opens up new opportunities to monitor and improve mental health and cognitive engagement,” said Rose Faghih, a researcher involved in the study. “One’s performance changes based on one’s cognitive engagement and arousal levels. For example, very low or very high levels of arousal can result in poor performance. Ultimately, researchers can use the inferred autonomic nervous system activation and decoded arousal to develop interventions to improve productivity.”
So far, the researchers have tested their device on human volunteers and have reported that they can decipher certain emotional states with a reasonable degree of accuracy and in just a few seconds.
To study in PLOS Computational Biology: Physiological characterization of electrodermal activity enables near real-time scalable inference of autonomic nervous system activation
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