A modified smartwatch can help reduce stress

The old adage “never let them see you sweat” doesn’t apply to the electrical and computer engineering lab of Rose Faghih, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering. In fact, Faghih looks for sweat, the kind that beads up on your upper lip when you’re nervous – skin conductance response (CRS) as the change in sweat activity is scientifically called. It is through this measurement that Faghih reports the ability to monitor stress and even help reduce it.

To collect and study these physiological stress signals, Faghih’s research team built a new closed-loop technology by placing two electrodes on wearable smartwatch-type devices. Once the stress signal is detected, a reminder is sent via the smartwatch, for example, to listen to relaxing music to calm down. Thus, the loop is closed because the detected stress initiates the subtle suggestion.

“This study is one of the very first steps towards the ultimate goal of monitoring brain responses using wearable devices and coming full circle to keep a person’s stressful state within a pleasant range.” , Faghih reports in the IEEE Xplore journal.

Electrodermal activity (that is, the electrical conductivity of the skin) contains important information about cognitive stress in the brain. Faghih uses signal processing techniques to track the hidden stress state and design an appropriate control algorithm to regulate the stress state and close the loop. The research results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and validate its feasibility of implementation in real life.

“To the best of our knowledge, this research is one of the very first to link cognitive stress state to changes in SCR events and to design the control mechanism to close the loop in a real-time simulation system.” , said the doctoral student from UH. and lead author of the study, Fekri Azgomi, who accomplished the task of closed-loop cognitive stress regulation in a simulation study based on experimental data.

Due to the increased ubiquity of wearable devices capable of measuring variables related to cognitive stress, the proposed architecture is a first step towards the treatment of cognitive disorders using non-invasive decoding of the state of the brain. .

The final results verify that the proposed architecture has great potential to be implemented in a portable device worn on the wrist and used in everyday life. “

Rose Faghih, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering

Stress is a global problem that can lead to catastrophic financial and health complications. A recent Gallup poll found that more than one in three adults (35%) worldwide said they were stressed for “much of the day yesterday”.