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Haynes AC, Lywood A, Crowe EM, Fielding JL, Rossiter JM, Kent C. A calming hug: Design and validation of a tactile aid to ease anxiety. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0259838. [PMID: 35263344 PMCID: PMC8906645 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259838] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2021] [Accepted: 10/27/2021] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Anxiety disorders affect approximately one third of people during their lifetimes and are the ninth leading cause of global disability. Current treatments focus on therapy and pharmacological interventions. However, therapy is costly and pharmacological interventions often have undesirable side-effects. Healthy people also regularly suffer periods of anxiety. Therefore, a non-pharmacological, intuitive, home intervention would be complementary to other treatments and beneficial for non-clinical groups. Existing at-home anxiety aids, such as guided meditations, typically employ visual and/or audio stimuli to guide the user into a calmer state. However, the tactile sense has the potential to be a more natural modality to target in an anxiety-calming device. The tactile domain is relatively under-explored, but we suggest that there are manifold physiological and affective qualities of touch that lend it to the task. In this study we demonstrate that haptic technology can offer an enjoyable, effective and widely accessible alternative for easing state anxiety. We describe a novel huggable haptic interface that pneumatically simulates slow breathing. We discuss the development of this interface through a focus group evaluating five prototypes with embedded behaviours (‘breathing’, ‘purring’, ‘heartbeat’ and ‘illumination’). Ratings indicated that the ‘breathing’ prototype was most pleasant to interact with and participants described this prototype as ‘calming’ and ‘soothing’, reminding them of a person breathing. This prototype was developed into an ergonomic huggable cushion containing a pneumatic chamber powered by an external pump allowing the cushion to ‘breathe’. A mixed-design experiment (n = 129) inducing anxiety through a group mathematics test found that the device was effective at reducing pre-test anxiety compared to a control (no intervention) condition and that this reduction in anxiety was indistinguishable from that of a guided meditation. Our findings highlight the efficacy of this interface, demonstrating that haptic technologies can be effective at easing anxiety. We suggest that the field should be explored in more depth to capture the nuances of different modalities in relation to specific situations and trait characteristics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alice C. Haynes
- Engineering Mathematics Department, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- Soft Robotics Group, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Bristol, United Kingdom
- * E-mail:
| | | | - Emily M. Crowe
- Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands
| | - Jessica L. Fielding
- School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
| | - Jonathan M. Rossiter
- Engineering Mathematics Department, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- Soft Robotics Group, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Bristol, United Kingdom
| | - Christopher Kent
- School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
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Invitto S, Keshmiri S, Mazzatenta A, Grasso A, Romano D, Bona F, Shiomi M, Sumioka H, Ishiguro H. Perception of Social Odor and Gender-Related Differences Investigated Through the Use of Transfer Entropy and Embodied Medium. Front Syst Neurosci 2021; 15:650528. [PMID: 34177474 PMCID: PMC8232750 DOI: 10.3389/fnsys.2021.650528] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/07/2021] [Accepted: 05/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
Abstract
The perception of putative pheromones or social odors (PPSO) in humans is a widely debated topic because the published results seem ambiguous. Our research aimed to evaluate how cross-modal processing of PPSO and gender voice can affect the behavioral and psychophysiological states of the subject during a listening task with a bodily contact medium, and how these effects could be gender related. Before the experimental session, three embodied media, were exposed to volatilized estratetraenol (Estr), 5α-androst-16-en-3 α-ol (Andr), and Vaseline oil. The experimental session consisted in listening to a story that were transmitted, with a male or female voice, by the communicative medium via a Bluetooth system during a listening task, recorded through 64-active channel electroencephalography (EEG). The sense of co-presence and social presence, elicited by the medium, showed how the established relationship with the medium was gender dependent and modulated by the PPSO. In particular, Andr induced greater responses related to co-presence. The gender of the participants was related to the co-presence desire, where women imagined higher medium co-presence than men. EEG findings seemed to be more responsive to the PPSO–gender voice interaction, than behavioral results. The mismatch between female PPSO and male voice elicited the greatest cortical flow of information. In the case of the Andr–male voice condition, the trained model appeared to assign more relevance to the flow of information to the right frontotemporal regions (involved in odor recognition memory and social behavior). The Estr–male voice condition showed activation of the bilateral frontoparietal network, which is linked to cognitive control, cognitive flexibility, and auditory consciousness. The model appears to distinguish the dissonance condition linked to Andr matched with a female voice: it highlights a flow of information to the right occipital lobe and to the frontal pole. The PPSO could influence the co-presence judgements and EEG response. The results seem suggest that could be an implicit pattern linked to PPSO-related gender differences and gender voice.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sara Invitto
- INSPIRE-Laboratory of Cognitive and Psychophysiological Olfactory Processes, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
| | - Soheil Keshmiri
- The Thomas N. Sato BioMEC-X Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Andrea Mazzatenta
- Neurophysiology, Olfaction and Chemoreception Laboratory, Physiology and Physiopathology Section, Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences Department, 'G. d'Annunzio' University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
| | - Alberto Grasso
- INSPIRE-Laboratory of Cognitive and Psychophysiological Olfactory Processes, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
| | - Daniele Romano
- Department of Psychology and NeuroMi, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.,Department of History, Society and Human Studies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
| | - Fabio Bona
- INSPIRE-Laboratory of Cognitive and Psychophysiological Olfactory Processes, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
| | - Masahiro Shiomi
- Interaction Science Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Hidenobu Sumioka
- Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Hiroshi Ishiguro
- Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Kyoto, Japan.,Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
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Eckstein M, Mamaev I, Ditzen B, Sailer U. Calming Effects of Touch in Human, Animal, and Robotic Interaction-Scientific State-of-the-Art and Technical Advances. Front Psychiatry 2020; 11:555058. [PMID: 33329093 PMCID: PMC7672023 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.555058] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/23/2020] [Accepted: 10/02/2020] [Indexed: 12/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Small everyday gestures such as a tap on the shoulder can affect the way humans feel and act. Touch can have a calming effect and alter the way stress is handled, thereby promoting mental and physical health. Due to current technical advances and the growing role of intelligent robots in households and healthcare, recent research also addressed the potential of robotic touch for stress reduction. In addition, touch by non-human agents such as animals or inanimate objects may have a calming effect. This conceptual article will review a selection of the most relevant studies reporting the physiological, hormonal, neural, and subjective effects of touch on stress, arousal, and negative affect. Robotic systems capable of non-social touch will be assessed together with control strategies and sensor technologies. Parallels and differences of human-to-human touch and human-to-non-human touch will be discussed. We propose that, under appropriate conditions, touch can act as (social) signal for safety, even when the interaction partner is an animal or a machine. We will also outline potential directions for future research and clinical relevance. Thereby, this review can provide a foundation for further investigations into the beneficial contribution of touch by different agents to regulate negative affect and arousal in humans.
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Affiliation(s)
- Monika Eckstein
- Institute of Medical Psychology, University Hospital Heidelberg, and Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Ilshat Mamaev
- Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
| | - Beate Ditzen
- Institute of Medical Psychology, University Hospital Heidelberg, and Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Uta Sailer
- Department of Behavioural Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
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Sumioka H, Keshmiri S, Ishiguro H. Information-theoretic investigation of impact of huggable communication medium on prefrontal brain activation. Adv Robot 2019. [DOI: 10.1080/01691864.2019.1652114] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Hidenobu Sumioka
- Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Soheil Keshmiri
- Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Hiroshi Ishiguro
- Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Kyoto, Japan
- Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
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