Relaxation helps to reduce physical, mental, and emotional pressure. Relaxation techniques generally enable a person to obtain calmness and well-being by reducing stress, anxiety, or anger. When a person becomes calm the body reacts physiologically, producing the so-called Relaxation Response (RResp) which affects the organism in a positive manner, no matter if it is during a state of relaxation or in the middle of a stressful period. The goal of this paper is to design a system capable of identifying automatically the RResps of a subject by analyzing a single physiological signal, the galvanic skin response (GSR). To do so, a team composed of psychologists, neurologists, and engineers designed two experiments for inducing RResps in the participants while their GSR signals were being collected. The team analyzed the data and identified three different levels of RResp that can be quantified using only two easily calculated GSR features. Moreover, the use of the surface produced by GSR and its linear approximation is totally novel. Finally, the data were classified using decision tree strategies for each of the experiments and, after seeing that the obtained trees were similar, the team synthesized them in a single classification system. The F1 values obtained by the generalized classifier scored between 0.966 and 1.000 for the data collected in both experiments.
A Self-Paced Relaxation Response Detection System Based on Galvanic Skin Response Analysis
Publication
IEEE Access
Vol 7, pp. 43730 - 43741
Abstract
Web and Email Links
Related Listings
Journal
The Clinical Journal of Pain
The treatment of chronic pain is costly and frustrating for the patient, health care provider, and health care system. This is due, in part, to the complexity of pain symptoms which are influenced by behavior patterns, socioeconomic factors, belief systems, and family dynamics as well as by physiological and mechanical components. Assessment of treatment outcomes is often limited to the patient's subjective, multidimensional, self-reports. Outcome measures based on data about return t […]
Journal
Am. J. Public Health
An experiment conducted at the corporate offices of a manufacturing firm investigated the effects of daily relaxation breaks on five self-reported measures of health, performance, and well-being. For 12 weeks, 126 volunteers filled out daily records and reported bi-weekly for additional measurements. After four weeks of baseline monitoring, they were divided randomly into three groups: Group A was taught a technique for producing the relaxation response; Group B was instructed to sit […]
Journal
PLOS ONE
Introduction Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) can profoundly affect quality of life and are influenced by stress and resiliency. The impact of mind-body interventions (MBIs) on IBS and IBD patients has not previously been examined. Methods Nineteen IBS and 29 IBD patients were enrolled in a 9-week relaxation response based mind-body group intervention (RR-MBI), focusing on elicitation of the RR and cognitive skill building. Symptom questionnaires […]

