Effectiveness of Music-Based Respiratory Biofeedback in Reducing Stress during Visually Demanding Tasks

Biofeedback techniques have shown to be effective to manage stress and improve task performance. Biofeedback generally can be divided into two steps (i) measuring physiological functions (e.g. respiration, heart rate) via sensors and (ii) conveying the physiological signals to the user to improve self-awareness. Current systems require costly and invasive sensors to measure physiology, which are not comfortable and are not readily accessible to the general population. Additionally, current feedback mechanisms may be physically unpleasant or may hinder multitasking, especially in visually-demanding environments. To overcome these problems, we developed two tools: a music-based biofeedback tool that uses music as the medium of feedback, and a tool to measure breathing rate using a smartphone camera. The music biofeedback tool encourages slow breathing by adjusting the quality of the music in response to the user’s breathing rate. This intervention combines the benefits of biofeedback and music to help users regulate their stress response while performing a visual task (driving a car simulator). We evaluate the intervention on a 2×2 design with music and auditory biofeedback as independent variables. Our results indicate that music-biofeedback leads to lower arousal (as measured by electrodermal activity and heart rate variability) than music alone, auditory biofeedback alone, and a control condition. Music biofeedback also reduces driving errors when compared to the other three conditions. While our results suggest that the music-based biofeedback tool is useful and enjoyable, it still requires expensive physiological sensors which are intrusive in nature. Hence, we present a second tool to measure breathing rate in real-time via smartphone camera, which makes it easily accessible given the pervasiveness of smartphones. Our algorithm measures breathing rate by obtaining the photoplethysmographic signal and performing spectral analysis using Goertzel algorithm. We validated the method under a range of controlled breathing rate conditions, and our results show a high degree of agreement between our estimates and ground truth measurements obtained via standard respiratory sensors. These results show that it is possible to accurately compute breathing rate in real-time using a smartphone

Engineering Music to Slow Breathing and Invite Relaxed Physiology

We engineered an interactive music system that influences a user's breathing rate to induce a relaxation response. This system generates ambient music containing periodic shifts in loudness that are determined by the user's own breathing patterns. We evaluated the efficacy of this music intervention for participants who were engaged in an attention-demanding task, and thus explicitly not focusing on their breathing or on listening to the music. We measured breathing patterns in addition to multiple peripheral and cortical indicators of physiological arousal while users experienced three different interaction designs: (1) a "Fixed Tempo" amplitude modulation rate at six beats per minute; (2) a "Personalized Tempo" modulation rate fixed at 75\% of each individual's breathing rate baseline, and (3) a "Personalized Envelope" design in which the amplitude modulation matches each individual's breathing pattern in real-time. Our results revealed that each interactive music design slowed down breathing rates, with the "Personalized Tempo" design having the largest effect, one that was more significant than the non-personalized design. The physiological arousal indicators (electrodermal activity, heart rate, and slow cortical potentials measured in EEG) showed concomitant reductions, suggesting that slowing users' breathing rates shifted them towards a more calmed state. These results suggest that interactive music incorporating biometric data may have greater effects on physiology than traditional recorded music.Comment: Accepted at 2019 8th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) biofeedback: a new training approach for operator’s performance enhancement

The widespread implementation of advanced and complex systems requires predominantly operators’ cognitive functions and less importance of human manual control. On the other hand, most operators perform their cognitive functions below their peak cognitive capacity level due to fatigue, stress, and boredom. Thus, there is a need to improve their cognitive functions during work. The goal of this paper is to present a psychophysiology training approach derived from cardiovascular response named heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback. Description of resonant frequency biofeedback - a specific HRV training protocol - is discussed as well as its supported researches for the performance enhancement. HRV biofeedback training works by teaching people to recognize their involuntary HRV and to control patterns of this physiological response. The training is directed to increase HRV amplitude that promotes autonomic nervous system balance. This balance is associated with improved physiological functioning as well as psychological benefits. Most individuals can learn HRV biofeedback training easily which involves slowing the breathing rate (around six breaths/min) to each individual’s resonant frequency at which the amplitude of HRV is maximized. Maximal control over HRV can be obtained in most people after approximately four sessions of training. Recent studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of HRV biofeedback to the improvement of some cognitive functions in both simulated and real industrial operators.Peer Reviewe

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) biofeedback: A new training approach for operator's performance enhancement

The widespread implementation of advanced and complex systems requires predominantly operators’ cognitive functions and less importance of human manual control. On the other hand, most operators perform their cognitive functions below their peak cognitive capacity level due to fatigue, stress, and boredom. Thus, there is a need to improve their cognitive functions during work. The goal of this paper is to present a psychophysiology training approach derived from cardiovascular response named heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback. Description of resonant frequency biofeedback - a specific HRV training protocol - is discussed as well as its supported researches for the performance enhancement. HRV biofeedback training works by teaching people to recognize their involuntary HRV and to control patterns of this physiological response. The training is directed to increase HRV amplitude that promotes autonomic nervous system balance. This balance is associated with improved physiological functioning as well as psychological benefits. Most individuals can learn HRV biofeedback training easily which involves slowing the breathing rate (around six breaths/min) to each individual’s resonant frequency at which the amplitude of HRV is maximized. Maximal control over HRV can be obtained in most people after approximately four sessions of training. Recent studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of HRV biofeedback to the improvement of some cognitive functions in both simulated and real industrial operators

Physiological Self Regulation with Biofeedback Games

Mental stress is a global epidemic that can have serious health consequences including cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Several techniques are available to teach stress self-regulation skills including therapy, meditation, deep breathing, and biofeedback. While effective, these methods suffer from high drop-outs due to the monotonic nature of the exercises and are generally practiced in quiet relaxed environment, which may not transfer to real-world scenarios. To address these issues, this dissertation presents a novel intervention for stress training using games and wearable sensors. The approach consists of monitoring the user’s physiological signals during gameplay, mapping them into estimates of stress levels, and adapting the game in a way that promotes states of low arousal. This approach offers two key advantages. First, it allows users to focus on the gameplay rather than on monitoring their physiological signals, which makes the training far more engaging. More importantly, it teaches users to self-regulate their stress response, while performing a task designed to increase arousal. Within this broad framework, this dissertation studies three specific problems. First, the dissertation evaluates three physiological signals (breathing rate, heart rate variability, and electrodermal activity) that span across the dimensions of degrees of selectivity in measuring arousal and voluntary control in their effectiveness in lowering arousal. This will identify the signal appropriate for game based stress training and the associated bio-signal processing techniques for real-time arousal estimation. Second, this dissertation investigates different methods of biofeedback presentation e.g. visual feedback and game adaptation during gameplay. Selection of appropriate biofeedback mechanism is critical since it provides the necessary information to improve the perception of visceral states (e.g. stress) to the user. Furthermore, these modalities facilitate skill acquisition in distinct ways (i.e., top-down and bottom-up learning) and influence retention of skills. Third, this dissertation studies reinforcement scheduling in a game and its effect on skill learning and retention. A reinforcement schedule determines which occurrences of the target response are reinforced. This study focuses on continuous and partial reinforcement schedules in GBF and their effect on resistance to extinction (i.e. ability to retain learned skills) after the biofeedback is removed. The main contribution of this dissertation is in demonstrating that stress self-regulation training can be embedded in videogames and help individuals develop more adaptive responses to reduce physiological stress encountered both at home and work

Subtle interactions for distress regulation: efficiency of a haptic wearable according to personality

The incorporation of empathic systems in everyday life draws a lot of attention from society. Specifically, the use of wearables to perform stress regulation is a growing field of research. Among techniques explored, the haptic emulation of lowered physiological signals has been suggested to be promising. However, some discrepancies remain in empirical research focusing on such biofeedback (BF) regarding their efficacy, and the mechanisms underlying the effects of these wearables remains unclear. Moreover, the influence of individual traits on the efficiency of BF has been marginally studied, while it has been shown that personality could impact both stress and its regulation. The aim of this study is to investigate the outcome of interactions with these technologies from a psycho-physiological standpoint, but also to explore whether personality may influence its efficiency when other interaction devices are present. Participants had to play a challenging game while a lowered haptic BF of their heart rate was induced on their wrist. Results showed variable efficiency of the wearable among the participants: a subjective relaxation was evident for the participants exhibiting the highest neurotic and extraverted traits score. Our results highlight the plurality of the modes of action of these techniques, depending on the individual and on the level of stress to regulate. This study also suggests that tailoring these regulation methods to individual characteristics, such as personality traits, is important to consider, and proposes perspectives regarding the investigation of stress and regulation systems embedded in wearables

PopStress:designing organizational stress intervention for office workers

Introduction: Excessive work stress on office workers will affect people's health and work efficiency, and organizational stress management is becoming more and more critical. Current studies focus on the management of individual stress. The collective nature of stress and coping needs further exploration. Methods: This paper proposes the PopStress system, which converts the negative stress of an office group into the energy of a popcorn machine. When the organizational stress accumulates to the threshold, the popcorn machine will start making popcorn and attract office workers to take a break and eat. Through multisensory stimuli such as visual, audio, and olfaction, the system encourages natural and entertaining social stress-relieving behaviors within the office. Results: Twenty-four office workers were recruited and divided into six groups for the user study. The results showed that PopStress enables users to understand the collective stress status, and successfully relieved the individual's physiological and psychological stress. This work provides insights into organizational stress management, health product design, and social design.</p

Meditation Experiences, Self, and Boundaries of Consciousness

Our experiences with the external world are possible mainly through vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell providing us a sense of reality. How the brain is able to seamlessly integrate stimuli from our external and internal world into our sense of reality has yet to be adequately explained in the literature. We have previously proposed a three-dimensional unified model of consciousness that partly explains the dynamic mechanism. Here we further expand our model and include illustrations to provide a better conception of the ill-defined space within the self, providing insight into a unified mind-body concept. In this article, we propose that our senses “super-impose” on an existing dynamic space within us after a slight, imperceptible delay. The existing space includes the entire intrapersonal space and can also be called the “the body’s internal 3D default space”. We provide examples from meditation experiences to help explain how the sense of ‘self’ can be experienced through meditation practice associated with underlying physiological processes that take place through cardio-respiratory synchronization and coherence that is developed among areas of the brain. Meditation practice can help keep the body in a parasympathetic dominant state during meditation, allowing an experience of inner ‘self’. Understanding this physical and functional space could help unlock the mysteries of the function of memory and cognition, allowing clinicians to better recognize and treat disorders of the mind by recommending proven techniques to reduce stress as an adjunct to medication treatment

Does Breath Pattern Influence Reacting and Feeling?

This experimental within-participant reversal paradigm quantified effects of breath manipulation on emotional reactivity and inhibition. Participants were assessed for inhibitory ability and emotional reactivity at baseline and following three breathing conditions: controlled neutral, resonance frequency, and variable breathing; selected to assess a range of breathing behavior from anxious breathing, vegetative breathing, and meditative breathing. Emotional reactivity was elicited using the International Affective Picture System and inhibition utilizing a verbal Stop Signal task. Dependent variables for emotion induction included self-reported mood and arousal using the Self-Assessment Manikin of Valence and Arousal, and for inhibition was response time and accuracy. For twenty-six healthy participants, emotion induction demonstrated no statistical findings across breathing condition. However, for inhibition tasks, a significant reduction in inhibitory response time and increase in response accuracy was found following resonance frequency breathing. Breath manipulation effects inhibitory control and could be a tool for improving efficacy of behavioral therapies addressing aspects of inhibition