Auditory Noise Can Facilitate Body's Peripheral Temperature Switchovers

Abstract

Home is the context of an ambient-intelligence environment. Nonetheless, one can downsize the environment. For example, the human body as an environment, and by reading all possible bio-signals, this article can create control loops where many of these bio-signals can be used as sensory inputs to make humans aware of their current perceptual-cognitive state. In this article, the authors present an example where the peripheral temperature is used as a marker to know when a human switchover from a stress state to a calm state happens. The switchovers are controlled by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. The authors showed that finger temperature can be modulated by an effective auditory noise, and in four of the six tested subjects, 70 dBSPL was the optimal noise. These results open the possibility of making personalized, adaptive and anticipatory devices capable of modulating the switchover from a stress state to a calm state.