Lately we have been reading researching and getting a lot of insights about the GSR, what our findings indicated was that you can tap into unconscious behavior that is not under cognitive control. Interestingly the Skin conductivity is solely modulated by autonomic and sympathetic activity that drives our bodily processes, including cognitive and emotional states as well as cognition on an entirely subconscious level. We simply cannot deliberately control the level of skin conductivity in an individual. This indeed renders the need for GSR and makes it the perfect marker for emotional arousal as it offers strong insights into physiological as well as psychological processes of a subject (person).

To add on more surprising factors for better understanding on how GSR works, just march back and have a look at the physiological characteristics of the only largest organ of the human Body ‘the skin’.

We understand that our skin functions as the unique principal interface between the organism and environment, right? The skin altogether with other organs in the body holds responsible for all bodily processes like the immune system, thermo-regulation in our body and the sensory-motor exploration as well.

To be a little more prolific about the above three –

The Immune System – As in protective barrier, the skin vitally separates our body from the environment and its many threats, they could be mechanical impacts and pressure, the variations in temperature, some micro-organisms, or the harmful radiations, and even a few chemical agents.

(Image Source: Google)

Thermo-Regulation – In the thermo-regulation the skin controls our body temperature by regulating sweat emission, something called piloerection, we call them ‘Goosebumps’), and peripheral blood circulation includes.

(Image Source: Google)

In the Sensing and Perception – The skin is an organ of extreme perception. It largely holds an huge network of nerve cells that detect and relay changes in the environment around based on the activity of receptors for temperature, pressure, and also pain.

(Image Source: Google)

Another interesting fact says that our body has nearly three million sweat glands. But the density of sweat glands varies remarkably across the body, being highest on our forehead and cheeks, also on the palms and fingers and on the sole of the feet. Whenever the sweat glands are triggered and become active, they secrete moisture through pores present on the skin surface. By changing the balance of the combination of both positive and negative ions in the secreted fluid, the electrical current flows more readily, resulting in some measurable changes in Skin Conductance, the simple theory here is, increased skin conductance results in decreased skin resistance. This change in human skin conductance is generally termed as Galvanic Skin Response which we also call GSR.

We are not stopping here, don’t worry we are getting closer to telling the emotional arousal part with our GSR research, just hang on and keep reading more on www.neuroconnect.in