Early Life Stress Detection Using Physiological Signals and Machine Learning Pipelines

Biology (Basel). 2023 Jan 6;12(1):91. doi: 10.3390/biology12010091.

Abstract

Pregnancy and early childhood are two vulnerable times when immunological plasticity is at its peak and exposure to stress may substantially raise health risks. However, to separate the effects of adversity during vulnerable times of the lifetime from those across the entire lifespan, we require deeper phenotyping. Stress is one of the challenges which everyone can face with this issue. It is a type of feeling which contains mental pressure and comes from daily life matters. There are many research and investments regarding this problem to overcome or control this complication. Pregnancy is a susceptible period for the child and the mother taking stress can affect the child's health after birth. The following matter can happen based on natural disasters, war, death or separation of parents, etc. Early Life Stress (ELS) has a connection with psychological development and metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. In the following research, the main focus is on Early Life Stress control during pregnancy of a healthy group of women that are at risk of future disease during their pregnancy. This study looked at the relationship between retrospective recollections of childhood or pregnancy hardship and inflammatory imbalance in a group of 53 low-income, ethnically diverse women who were seeking family-based trauma treatment after experiencing interpersonal violence. Machine learning Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are applied for stress detection using short-term physiological signals in terms of non-linear and for a short term. The focus concepts are heart rate, and hand and foot galvanic skin response.

Keywords: early life stress; machine learning; physiological signals; prediction.

Grants and funding

This This research was financially supported by the Ministry of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises(SMEs) and Startups(MSS), Korea, under the “Regional Specialized Industry Development Plus Program(R&D, S3246057)” supervised by the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology(KIAT).