measuring emotions in the body, considering their electromagnetic nature?
MarcusAnton1us
San Francisco
Hi everyone,
I’m new to this forum and excited to join the community! I have a question that has been on my mind, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
At our company, we're developing a wearable device that aims to measure real-time emotional states. We’re exploring the electromagnetic nature of emotions and how this energy propagates through the body via different pathways—possibly even meridians.
We know that emotions correlate with changes in skin conductivity, heart rate variability, and potentially subtle electromagnetic fluctuations. However, the challenge is capturing these EMF signals in a way that is both precise and practical for everyday use.
I'm curious—how would you approach measuring emotions in the body, considering their electromagnetic properties? Have you come across any interesting research, sensor technologies, or methodologies that might be relevant?
Looking forward to your insights!
Adrian
Comments
Hi Adrian,
The 'Galea' headset is being used by a number of companies to track multiple sensor arrays in order to characterize the subject's emotional and mental states.
https://openbci.com/
https://galea.co/
https://openbci.com/citations
As far as EEG goes, the research field that explores emotion / 'affect' characterization is called Affective BCI. There are many papers published in this area.
https://www.google.com/search?as_q=affective&as_sitesearch=openbci.com
https://www.google.com/search?q=affective+bci
William
https://www.google.com/search?q=measuring+emotional+affect
Thank you William, but none of these answers address the question I asked. The mentioned EEG has little relevance to emotional states. Can we use brain activity? Not reliably. Current evidence does not strongly support the idea that emotions correspond to distinct brain regions, circuits, or networks (Lindquist et al., 2012; Wager et al., 2015). For example, amygdala activation does not necessarily indicate fear; rather, it likely reflects a domain-general process observed across various emotions.
The question is: What equipment would you use to measure emotions in the body, considering their electromagnetic properties?
So you did NOT read any of the info on Affective BCI? Contrary to your assertion, it is being used to measure emotions. At least try reading some of the reference links. The amygdala is NOT what is being measured. 'Distinct regions' are not being measured. Also read up on Machine Learning.
I think these modern ideas with affective BCI are a bit of a stretch, as they're based on the rather naive assumption that emotions are located somewhere specific in the brain. New research shows something completely different - emotions emerge from the whole brain-body-context system, not in some single "emotion center." There are also no clear "fingerprints" in the brain for specific emotions, which meta-analyses confirm. Plus, they completely ignore the influence of culture and context on emotions, individual differences in experiencing feelings, and the fact that emotions are dynamic processes, not static states. Long story short - current BCI systems don't capture the complexity of human emotions because they're based on an outdated model.
Well then WHY are you looking for answers on a BCI website?? OpenBCI is all about EEG and Brain Computer interfacing.
Your dismissal of an entire research area seems extreme.
https://www.google.com/search?q=measuring+emotional+affect
https://www.google.com/search?q=affective+bci
The idea behind the Galea headset, is that the array of sensors provided, using the 'sensor fusion' concept, can give more cross-validation about the affect that the subject is experiencing.