Silva Hugo, Fred Ana, Lourenco Andre
Instituto de Telecomunicacões, Instituto Superior Técnico, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal.
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2012;2012:6756-9. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2012.6347545.
Electrodermal activity is amongst the main psychophysiological arousal indicators used in clinical and affective computing application scenarios. This is mostly due to the relation between the skin conductance responses and the autonomic nervous system activity, in particular, the sympathetic subsystem operation. Although thermal regulation is also controlled by these components of the nervous system, which is expressed as a tonic variation in the electrodermal activity signals, reactions to psychological stimuli can also be detected, in this case, expressed as phasic variations. So far, there is still no clear consensus regarding the relation between the specific responses of the autonomic nervous system activity, and the features typically extracted from the electrodermal activity signals. Therefore, signal processing and feature extraction have been active research topics in the field. In this paper we present an experimental setup and corresponding data analysis for electrodermal response propagation time measurement. Experimental results have revealed interesting properties in this signal, enhancing its potential as a psychophysiological marker, and thus further expanding the toolbox for researchers in the field.
皮肤电活动是临床和情感计算应用场景中使用的主要心理生理唤醒指标之一。这主要是由于皮肤电导反应与自主神经系统活动之间的关系，特别是交感神经子系统的运作。虽然体温调节也受神经系统这些组成部分的控制，这表现为皮肤电活动信号中的一种持续性变化，但对心理刺激的反应也能被检测到，在这种情况下，表现为阶段性变化。到目前为止，关于自主神经系统活动的特定反应与通常从皮肤电活动信号中提取的特征之间的关系，仍然没有明确的共识。因此，信号处理和特征提取一直是该领域的活跃研究课题。在本文中，我们展示了用于测量皮肤电反应传播时间的实验装置和相应的数据分析。实验结果揭示了该信号中有趣的特性，增强了其作为心理生理标志物的潜力，从而进一步扩展了该领域研究人员的工具箱。
