Simulation of ambulatory electrodermal activity and the handling of low-quality segments

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Monitoring electrodermal activity (EDA) in daily life requires effective handling of low-quality segments, which are common in ambulatory EDA data. Although several low-quality handling methods have been implemented, systematic comparison of these methods, which requires a large annotated dataset, is lacking.

METHODS

Therefore, we proposed the simulation of realistic ambulatory EDA data starting from high-quality EDA signals, which were subsequently contaminated with varying concentrations of artifacts. Subsequently, three approaches for handling low-quality data were evaluated regarding the preservation of several EDA-derived features: removing all artifacts, interpolating over removed artifacts, and retaining all artifacts. Specifically, multiple EDA features were assessed, derived from response detection (evaluated using F1, precision, recall) as well as EDA, phasic, and tonic features (assessed using absolute error), by comparing the simulated EDA data with and without the inserted artifacts, using the latter as ground truth.

RESULTS

For response detection, retaining artifacts resulted in the highest F1-scores, while interpolating over removed artifacts achieved the highest F1-scores for the phasic signal. The approaches did significantly differ in the mean error for the phasic but not for the tonic component and raw EDA.

CONCLUSION

This work generated ambulatory EDA datasets of 200 h, containing 0.125 to 3 artifacts per minute, and showed that interpolation over removed artifacts was an effective approach to reconstruct phasic-derived features up to 2 artifacts per minute. The proposed simulation and evaluation methodology, which are easily customizable, offer opportunities for future research to develop and systematically compare signal quality indicators, decomposition methods, and response detectors for processing ambulatory EDA.

Investigating two mobile just-in-time adaptive interventions to foster psychological resilience: research protocol of the DynaM-INT study

BACKGROUND

Stress-related disorders such as anxiety and depression are highly prevalent and cause a tremendous burden for affected individuals and society. In order to improve prevention strategies, knowledge regarding resilience mechanisms and ways to boost them is highly needed. In the Dynamic Modelling of Resilience - interventional multicenter study (DynaM-INT), we will conduct a large-scale feasibility and preliminary efficacy test for two mobile- and wearable-based just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs), designed to target putative resilience mechanisms. Deep participant phenotyping at baseline serves to identify individual predictors for intervention success in terms of target engagement and stress resilience.

METHODS

DynaM-INT aims to recruit N = 250 healthy but vulnerable young adults in the transition phase between adolescence and adulthood (18-27 years) across five research sites (Berlin, Mainz, Nijmegen, Tel Aviv, and Warsaw). Participants are included if they report at least three negative burdensome past life events and show increased levels of internalizing symptoms while not being affected by any major mental disorder. Participants are characterized in a multimodal baseline phase, which includes neuropsychological tests, neuroimaging, bio-samples, sociodemographic and psychological questionnaires, a video-recorded interview, as well as ecological momentary assessments (EMA) and ecological physiological assessments (EPA). Subsequently, participants are randomly assigned to one of two ecological momentary interventions (EMIs), targeting either positive cognitive reappraisal or reward sensitivity. During the following intervention phase, participants' stress responses are tracked using EMA and EPA, and JITAIs are triggered if an individually calibrated stress threshold is crossed. In a three-month-long follow-up phase, parts of the baseline characterization phase are repeated. Throughout the entire study, stressor exposure and mental health are regularly monitored to calculate stressor reactivity as a proxy for outcome resilience. The online monitoring questionnaires and the repetition of the baseline questionnaires also serve to assess target engagement.

DISCUSSION

The DynaM-INT study intends to advance the field of resilience research by feasibility-testing two new mechanistically targeted JITAIs that aim at increasing individual stress resilience and identifying predictors for successful intervention response. Determining these predictors is an important step toward future randomized controlled trials to establish the efficacy of these interventions.