TY - GEN
T1 - Evaluation of a Portable Stress Management Device
AU - Lee, Jeon
AU - Finkelstein, Joseph
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Portable consumer health management devices are increasingly gaining attention from health consumers. StressEraser is a portable biofeedback device widely advertised as a stress reliever and cognition enhancer. However number of evaluation studies assessing effect of StressEraser on cognitive performance improvement and stress relief is very limited. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of StressEraser on cognitive performance and stress relief using a crossover design. A computerized psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) was selected as a mental stressor. The cognitive performance and stress level were measured in fourteen subjects having two 10-minute PVTs and 10-minute StressEraser intervention in between the PVTs. All main PVT metrics of cognitive performance (MeanRT, MedianRT, and Fastest 10%) became significantly worse after StressEraser application (P<0.05). On the other hand, six heart rate variability (HRV) parameters (MeanRR, SDNN, RMSSD, aLF, aHF, and LF/HF) used to assess stress level showed no significant differences between the first and the second PVTs. Furthermore, the subjective stress levels reported by the study subjects after the first and the second PVTs were not significantly different. We concluded that the StressEraser had a negative effect on cognitive performance and no effect on stress level.
AB - Portable consumer health management devices are increasingly gaining attention from health consumers. StressEraser is a portable biofeedback device widely advertised as a stress reliever and cognition enhancer. However number of evaluation studies assessing effect of StressEraser on cognitive performance improvement and stress relief is very limited. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of StressEraser on cognitive performance and stress relief using a crossover design. A computerized psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) was selected as a mental stressor. The cognitive performance and stress level were measured in fourteen subjects having two 10-minute PVTs and 10-minute StressEraser intervention in between the PVTs. All main PVT metrics of cognitive performance (MeanRT, MedianRT, and Fastest 10%) became significantly worse after StressEraser application (P<0.05). On the other hand, six heart rate variability (HRV) parameters (MeanRR, SDNN, RMSSD, aLF, aHF, and LF/HF) used to assess stress level showed no significant differences between the first and the second PVTs. Furthermore, the subjective stress levels reported by the study subjects after the first and the second PVTs were not significantly different. We concluded that the StressEraser had a negative effect on cognitive performance and no effect on stress level.
KW - Consumer informatics
KW - StressEraser
KW - cognitive performance
KW - self-management
KW - stress
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84952041538&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84952041538&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3233/978-1-61499-488-6-248
DO - 10.3233/978-1-61499-488-6-248
M3 - Conference contribution
C2 - 25676982
AN - SCOPUS:84952041538
T3 - Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
SP - 248
EP - 252
BT - Driving Quality in Informatics
A2 - Courtney, Karen
A2 - Kuo, Alex
A2 - Shabestari, Omid
PB - IOS Press
T2 - International Conference on Information Technology and Communication in Health, ITCH 2015
Y2 - 26 February 2015 through 1 March 2015
ER -