Electrodermal activity (EDA) — the sweat-induced fluctuations of skin conductance made famous in TV dramatizations of lie-detector tests — can be a truly strong indicator of subconscious, or “sympathetic,” nervous system activity for all kinds of purposes, but only if it is analyzed optimally. In a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an MIT-based team of scientists provides a new, fast, and accurate statistical model for analyzing EDA. “Only so much of EDA is intuitive just by looking at the signal,” says Sandya Subramanian, a…
