stress
...nals to fight stress. Physicians rely on complicated Biofeedback machines to detect a person’s internal bodily functions with far greater sensitivity and precision than a person can with his or her five basic senses. For patients, the biofeedback machine acts like a sixth sense which allows them to “see” or “hear” activity inside their bodies. Stressful events produce strong emotions, which arouse certain physical responses. Many of these responses are controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, the network of nerve tissues that helps prepare the body to meet emergencies by the “fight or flight” response. In the “fight or flight” response: pupils open, blood pressure increases, blood vessels contracts, the gastrointestinal tract shuts down, and the heart beat faster. The basic goal of Biofeedback is to enable people to gain control over their bodies involuntary responses to stress. In this experiment the Biofeedback Relaxation System, known as the, Galvanic Skin Response (GSR2) will enable people to observe the subtle signals the body emits as result of stress. Every time the bodies autonomic nervous system changes its level or arousal (stress) or relaxation, the moisture of the skin changes, and this effects its electrical conductivity, or the Galvanic Skin Response. The GSR machine instantly and accurately measures a person’s emotional and physical level of arousal. The GSR2 allows us to guide our bodies into a state of relaxation and ultimately conquer the perils of stress, by controlling the bodies involuntary responses to it. It is a known fact that people respond to the sense of smell on an emotional and physiological level stronger than any other sense. This experiment will use the galvanic skin response technique to detect the bodies physiological stress response to aroma...