RESEARCH ARTICLE
Wearable Biomonitoring Platform for the Assessment of Stress and its Impact on Cognitive Performance of Firefighters: An Experimental Study
Susana Rodrigues1, 2, *, Joana S. Paiva1, 2, 3, Duarte Dias1, 2, Gonçalo Pimentel1, 2, Mariana Kaiseler4, João Paulo S. Cunha1, 2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2018Volume: 14
First Page: 250
Last Page: 262
Publisher ID: CPEMH-14-250
DOI: 10.2174/1745017901814010250
Article History:
Received Date: 12/7/2018Revision Received Date: 1/10/2018
Acceptance Date: 8/10/2018
Electronic publication date: 31/10/2018
Collection year: 2018
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Stress is a complex process with an impact on health and performance. The use of wearable sensor-based monitoring systems offers interesting opportunities for advanced health care solutions for stress analysis. Considering the stressful nature of firefighting and its importance for the community’s safety, this study was conducted for firefighters.
Objectives:
A biomonitoring platform was designed, integrating different biomedical systems to enable the acquisition of real time Electrocardiogram (ECG), computation of linear Heart Rate Variability (HRV) features and collection of perceived stress levels. This platform was tested using an experimental protocol, designed to understand the effect of stress on firefighter’s cognitive performance, and whether this effect is related to the autonomic response to stress.
Method:
The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was used as a testing platform along with a 2-Choice Reaction Time Task. Linear HRV features from the participants were acquired using an wearable ECG. Self-reports were used to assess perceived stress levels.
Results:
The TSST produced significant changes in some HRV parameters (AVNN, SDNN and LF/HF) and subjective measures of stress, which recovered after the stress task. Although these short-term changes in HRV showed a tendency to normalize, an impairment on cognitive performance was found after performing the stress event.
Conclusion:
Current findings suggested that stress compromised cognitive performance and caused a measurable change in autonomic balance. Our wearable biomonitoring platform proved to be a useful tool for stress assessment and quantification. Future studies will implement this biomonitoring platform for the analysis of stress in ecological settings.
