Overview of the effect of physiological stress on different biological signals

Abstract

Stress is natural response for changes or challenges. When someone experience stress, there body produce physical and mental responses. The body responds with a change in circumstance by introducing different physiological, biological, or physical changes based around the specific event. This paper covers the effect of physiological stress on different biological signal that generates due to biological events and can be measure reliably using physiological measures such as electrocardiogram (ECG), electromyogram (EMG), electroencephalogram (EEG), electrodermal activity (EDA) and bodily measures (speech, breathing rate, eye activity, skin temperature etc.). Different people respond in a variety of ways to different types of stressors, for example, some people might react strongly to a Stroop Color-Word Test (SCWT) or mental arithmetic tasks (MAT), while others will not be as affected by them. SCWT can elicit social stress created by being exposed to interviews or the idea that one’s performance will be judged. The studies performed in this paper is mainly done in controlled environments. However, it is not likely that stressors in everyday life will be as intense. Observations of biosignals makes it easier to monitor arousal, which can provide evidence of stress when modelling it into other more complex states such as anxiety.