Wearable Instrument for Skin Potential Response Analysis in AAL applications

Antonio Affanni, Giovanni Chiorboli

Abstract

A novel instrument able to acquire Skin Potential Response (SPR) signals is proposed; SPR is a branch of Electrodermal Activity (EDA) and consists of reading nervous electric pulses that arise when the sympathetic nervous system activates sweat glands as a reaction of an external stressing stimulus. Scientific literature shows that EDA is a good methodology to detect workload, increased stress level and many neurological diseases or addictions. In this paper, we present the design and characterization of a wearable, battery operated, wireless device which can acquire SPR data and can be integrated in a wireless sensor network for the AAL. The developed control panel is responsible of receiving the SPR data, plotting them in real time and, on a secondary screen, providing to the patient visual and auditory stimuli; as a further stimuli generator, an adaptive game controlled by the SPR signal has been developed. The synchronous plot of stimuli markers and SPR signal on the same graph can provide a very useful information for the SPR analysis.

Keywords

Electrodermal Activity, Evoked Potentials, Wearable Instruments, Wireless sensors

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IMEKO-TC4-2014-418.pdf

DOI

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IMEKO TC

TC4 - Measurement of Electrical Quantities

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