Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Dec 19;9(1):52-58.
doi: 10.2478/joeb-2018-0010. eCollection 2018 Jan.

Electrodermal Activity Responses for Quantitative Assessment of Felt Pain

Dindar S Bari  1 , Haval Y Yacoob Aldosky  2 , Christian Tronstad  3 , Håvard Kalvøy  3 , Ørjan G Martinsen  3   4
Affiliations

Electrodermal Activity Responses for Quantitative Assessment of Felt Pain

Dindar S Bari et al. J Electr Bioimpedance. .

Abstract

Accurate assessment of experienced pain is a well-known problem in the clinical practices. Therefore, a proper method for pain detection is highly desirable. Electrodermal activity (EDA) is known as a measure of the sympathetic nervous system activity, which changes during various mental stresses. As pain causes mental stress, EDA measures may reflect the felt pain. This study aims to evaluate changes in skin conductance responses (SCRs), skin potential responses (SPRs), and skin susceptance responses (SSRs) simultaneously as a result of sequences of electrical (painful) stimuli with different intensities. EDA responses as results of painful stimuli were recorded from 40 healthy volunteers. The stimuli with three different intensities were produced by using an electrical stimulator. EDA responses significantly changed (increased) with respect to the intensity of the stimuli. Both SCRs and SSRs showed linear relationship with the painful stimuli. It was found that the EDA responses, particularly SCRs (p < 0.001) and SSRs (p = 0.001) were linearly affected by the intensity of the painful stimuli. EDA responses, in particular SCRs, may be used as a useful indicator for assessment of experienced pain in clinical settings.

Keywords: EDA; Pain; electrodermal activity; skin conductance; skin potential; skin susceptance; stimuli.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest Ø.G. Martinsen is involved with a company (Biogauge AS, Norway), which produces instruments for electrodermal activity measurements. Authors state no other conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Box-plot with medians, quartiles and the min and max as whiskers shows value of SCRs_Amp with respect to the stimulus intensity. *p<0.05 and **p<0.005.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Box-plot with medians, quartiles and the min and max as whiskers shows value of SPRs_Amp with respect to the stimulus intensity.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Box-plot with medians, quartiles and the min and max as whiskers shows value of SSRs_Amp with respect to the stimulus intensity. *p<0.05.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Shows relation between average values of amplitudes of SCRs, SPRs and SSRs on one side, and the stimulus intensity on other side.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
A typical EDA recording from a participant, demonstrating changes in EDA responses with respect to painful stimuli.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Box-plot with medians, quartiles and the min and max as whiskers, showing the SPRET percentage for all participants with respect to the stimulus intensity.*p<0.05 and **p<0.005.
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
SPRET percentage for each category.
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
SCR_Trise to the different stimulus intensity presented as box-plots with medians, quartiles and the min and max as whiskers. **p<0.005.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Boucsein W. Electrodermal activity. Berlin: Plenum Press; 2012. - DOI
    1. Martin I, Venables PH. Techniques in psychophysiology. Chichester: Wiley & Sons; 1980.
    1. Healey JA, Picard RW. Detecting stress during real-world driving tasks using physiological sensors. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst. 2005;6:156–66. doi: 10.1109/TITS.2005.848368. - DOI
    1. Setz C, Arnrich B, Schumm J, La Marca R, Tröster G, Ehlert U. Discriminating stress from cognitive load using a wearable EDA device. IEEE Trans Inf Technol Biomed. 2010;14:410–17. doi: 10.1109/TITB.2009.2036164. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Tronstad C, Kalvøy H, Grimnes S, Martinsen ØG.. Improved estimation of sweating based on electrical properties of skin. Annals Biomed Eng. 2013;41:1074–83. doi: 10.1007/s10439-013-0743-4. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources