Comparing task‐induced psychophysiological responses between persons with stress‐related complaints and healthy controls: A methodological pilot study

Abstract

Aims:Chronic stress is an important factor for a variety of health problems, highlight-ing the importance of early detection of stress‐related problems. This methodologicalpilot study investigated whether the physiological response to and recovery froma stresstask can differentiate healthy participants and persons with stress‐related complaints.Methods and Results:Healthy participants (n = 20) and participants with stress‐related complaints (n = 12) participated in a laboratory stress test, which included 3 stresstasks. Three physiological signals were recorded: galvanic skin response (GSR), heart rate(HR), and skin temperature (ST). From these signals, 126 features were extracted, includ-ing static (eg, mean) and dynamic (eg, recovery time) features. Unsupervised featureselection reduced the set to 26 features. A logistic regression model was developed for6 feature sets, analysing single‐parameter and multiparameter models as well as modelsusing recovery vs response‐related features. The highest classification performance(accuracy = 78%) was obtained using the response‐related feature set, including all phys-iological signals and using GSR‐related features. A worse performance was obtainedusing single‐signal feature sets based on HR (accuracy = 66%) and ST (accuracy = 59%).Response‐related features outperformed recovery‐related features (accuracy = 63%).Conclusion:Participants with stress‐related complaints may be differentiated fromhealthy controls by physiological responses to stress tasks. We aimed to bring atten-tion to new exploratory methodologies; further research is needed to validate andreplicate the results on larger populations and patients on different areas along thestress continuum.