INTERSTRESS to develop anti-stress solution
Starlab is one of the partners of INTERSTRESS, an European-funded project that aims to design, develop, and test an advanced ICT-based solution for the assessment, treatment and prevention of psychological stress.
The project is helmed by Istituto Auxologico Italiano and involves eleven partners from six countries
INTERSTRESS will use a new e-Health concept, interreality, in which behaviour in the physical world will influence the virtual world experience, and vice versa. The project will employ 3D shared virtual world role-playing, bio and activity sensors, and mobile and Internet applications. The vision for the resulting system is a personalized, immersive e-therapy in which biofeedback, simulation, and presence are key components of the therapeutic process. INTERSTRESS will provide a proof of concept as well as clinical validation.
Starlab neuroscientist Alejandro Riera, responsible for the project in the company, explains that the main role of Starlab in INTERSTRESS is to research on the potential use of EEG to detect stress.
"Stress will be induced to a set of subjects while their EEG are being recorded. By analysing the EEG data, we will look for features that vary with the level of stress. Once these features are identified, we plan to use this system to monitor the stress level of the patients using the overall INTERSTRESS stress management platform."
Sttarlab will also implement a neurofeedback application in which patients will learn how to modulate their EEG in order to deal with stress. "In other words, the stress marker of the EEG will be measured in real time and a virtual scenario in which the subject is immersed will change as the EEG stress markers change", Riera says.
"As an example we can think of a virtual scenario in which the weather changes with the level of stress detected with the EEG: the calmer we are, the better weather we have but if the subject is stressed, the weather will change and rain, thunders and strikes will appear."
Enobio, the portable wireless brain monitoring system developed by Starlab, will be used for the project. Since the sensor is wireless and wearable, it is a very suitable device to be integrated within the INTERSTRESS solution.
