Profiling Stress and Empathy with Neurophysiologic Sensing
The Problem:
Lifetime occurrence in veterans who develop
PTS ranges:10% to 30% PTS symptoms confounded by comorbidity
Cumulative effects of stressors are countered by different and mutually related aspects of stress resilience
The Solution:
Identify those with low resilience prior to deployment
Build resilience through guided improvement of coping strategies based on virtual reality that adapts to the neurophysiological state
Physiological markers of PTSD
Flatter 1/f slope of the power spectrum, predictive of depression and consistent with disruptions in global excitatory-inhibitory balance (E>I)
Reduced oscillatory alpha and beta power, predictive of anxiety and consistent with hypervigilance
Reduced heart rate variability (HRV) at rest, indicating maladaptive autonomic nervous system and persistent stress
Delayed and heightened early stimulus processing, decreased cognitive processing
Evaluation of a VR-EEG Stress Innoculation Platform
Integrated virtual reality game developed by USC-ICT with physiological data acquisition (EEG, ECG, skin conductance)
Developed an EEG-based “EM” classifier to identified stress exposure, demonstrated 75% accuracy
A statistically significant drop in EM score occurred in the 20s period following the start of a stressful event in 4 out of 6 scenarios (p=0.04). There were no significant changes in heart rate or skin conductance
The dissonance between EEG and autonomous nervous system could be used in evaluation of similar stress elicitation/PTSD abatement tools
