A Peronal Biofeedback Mental Training System Based on Relaxation Response

Just as physical training improves body abilities, mental training has positive conditioning effects for people of all ages. Many old exercise instruments, however, only focused on improvement of physical abilities. In addition, most of the recently developed mental training system provide monotonous training protocols, without any reflection of subject’s physiological status. In order to solve this lack of mental training system and to serve various mental training protocols, which reflect the physiological factors, we developed a mental training system based on the concept of relaxation response. In our developed mental training system, there are two main parameters to represent subject’s physiological status: pulse rate and respiratory rate. These two parameters are responsible for Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which controls functions in the body which normally occur unconsciously. From this fact, we have intended to balance the ANS through the control of subject’s breathing habit. We used a red-LED typed biosensor to detect pulse wave and to estimate breath wave. In order to evaluate respiratory wave, we have applied the pulse envelope detection technique and beat-to-beat heart rate variability. We have assessed this algorithm whether it agrees with real breath rate or not. From the experimental results, we have concluded that our estimated respiratory rate approximately agrees with real breath rate and thus our system can be used as a mental training system through balancing the ANS by controlling subject’s respiratory rate.