Skin Conductance Biofeedback
Skin Conductance can be both one of the simplest yet one of the most complex modalities of biofeedback at the same time. More stress, the reading goes up. More relaxed, the reading goes down. Simple, right? Not so fast. Make sure we are not actually talking about resistance measures which are exactly opposite from conductance. Besides two opposite measures of conductance and resistance, we should also add skin potential. When I was introduced to biofeedback way back in 1984, GSR or Galvanic Skin Response was the common feedback modality for monitoring changes based on sweat activity. The readings in Ohms would go down when there was more sweat on the skin because resistance was decreasing and it would go up if the amount of sweat decreased because resistance was increasing. The audio tone was reversed so that it went up when the subject was responding to something and got lower when they recovered or calmed down.
