Overview: A newly developed “e-tattoo” monitors electrodermal activity and reveals when a person is experiencing elevated stress levels. The “tattoo” is attached to the user’s palm and connected to a smartwatch.
sauce: UT Austin
Our palms can tell us a lot about our emotional states. Your palms tend to get wet when you’re excited or nervous. This response is used to measure emotional stress and help people with mental health issues, but currently the devices to do it are bulky, unreliable, and can be placed on conspicuous parts of the body. Attaching highly visible sensors can perpetuate social stigma.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have applied a new electronic tattoo (e-tattoo) technology to this type of monitoring, known as electrodermal activity or EDA sensing.
In a new paper recently published Nature Communications, researchers created graphene-based electronic tattoos. It attaches to your palm, is virtually invisible, and connects to your smartwatch.
“It’s so unobtrusive that you sometimes forget you’re wearing it. It also reduces the social stigma around wearing these devices in prominent places on your body,” says Aerospace Engineering and Professor in the Department of Engineering Mechanics, Project.
Lou and her collaborators have been advancing wearable electronic tattoo technology for many years. Graphene is a popular material due to its thinness and the fact that it can measure the electrical potential of the human body accurately and very accurately.
However, such ultra-thin materials, even with distortion, cannot be handled very well. Therefore, it is difficult to apply them to areas of the body that move a lot, such as palms/wrists.
The secret sauce to this discovery is how electronic palm tattoos can successfully transfer data into rigid circuits. Used.
By making the ribbon meander back and forth, it handles the strain associated with hand movements associated with daily activities such as gripping the steering wheel, opening the door, and running while driving.
Current palm monitoring technology either peels off the bulky electrodes, making them highly visible, or applies the EDA sensor to other parts of the body, resulting in less accurate readings.
Other researchers have attempted a similar method of connecting the tattoo to the reader using nanometer-thick straight ribbons, but they were unable to handle the strain of constant movement.
According to Lu, the researchers were inspired by virtual reality (VR), games, and the upcoming metaverse for this study. VR is sometimes used to treat mental illness. However, VR’s ability to recognize humans is lacking in many ways.
“We want to know if people are responding to this treatment,” Lu said. “Does it help them? At this point, it’s hard to judge.”
About this Neurotech Research News
author: press office
sauce: UT Austin
contact: Press Office – UT Austin
image: Image credit to UT Austin
Original research: open access.
“Graphene e-tattoo that does not interfere with ambulatory electrodermal activity in the palm, enabled by heterogeneous serpentine ribbonsJang Hong Woo and others Nature Communications
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Overview
Graphene e-tattoo that does not interfere with ambulatory electrodermal activity in the palm, enabled by heterogeneous serpentine ribbons
Electrodermal activity (EDA) is a common indicator of psychological stress. Her EDA sensors, which are state-of-the-art, either get in the way in the palm or suffer from poor signal fidelity away from the palm. Previous inventions of submicron-thin invisible graphene electronic tattoos (GETs) are ideal for unobtrusive EDA sensing in the palm of your hand.
However, robust electrical connections between ultrathin devices and rigid circuit boards have long been lacking as a component for ambulatory use.
To minimize the well-known strain concentration at their interface, we proposed heterogeneous serpentinite ribbons (HSPR), which refer to GET serpentinites partially overlapping gold serpentinites without the addition of adhesives. increase.
A 50-fold reduction in strain in HSPR over heterogeneous straight ribbons (HSTR) has been found and understood. The combination of HSPR and a soft intermediate layer between the GET and EDA wristband enabled ambulatory EDA monitoring in the palm of the hand in free-living conditions.
A newly developed EDA event selection policy that leverages unbiased selection of compatible events validated the GET EDA sensor against the gold standard.
