Galvanic skin response sensor diy
Skin conductance is not under conscious control. The amount of sweat glands varies across the human body, but is the highest in hand and foot regions (200–600 sweat glands per cm2 ), where the GSR signal is typically collected from.
GALVANIC SKIN RESPONSE SENSOR DIY SKIN
While sweat secretion plays a major role for thermoregulation and sensory discrimination, changes in skin conductance are also triggered robustly by emotional stimulation : the higher the arousal, the higher the skin conductance. This connection of emotional response to GSR signal has been explored in thousands of articles in the 120+ years since this seminal finding. Vigouroux was the first researcher to uncover a link between mental state and GSR activity, finding an association with the level of sedation in patients and skin resistance. The GSR signal is therefore not representative of the type of emotion, but the intensity of it. It is noteworthy that both positive (“happy” or “joyful”) and negative (“threatening” or “saddening”) stimuli can result in an increase in arousal – and in an increase in skin conductance. Research has shown how this is linked to emotional arousal. Our level of emotional arousal changes in response to the environment we’re in – if something is scary, threatening, joyful, or otherwise emotionally relevant, then the subsequent change in emotional response that we experience also increases eccrine sweat gland activity. The galvanic skin response (GSR, which falls under the umbrella term of electrodermal activity, or EDA) refers to changes in sweat gland activity that are reflective of the intensity of our emotional state, otherwise known as emotional arousal.