Chronic stress evaluation using neural networks

Discusses noninvasively obtaining an objective index of stress using a five-layer neural network. The authors present a method to evaluate chronic stress of rats that is based on the electrocardiogram (ECG) using neural networks. As a first approach, the authors focus on whether an objective index derived from the ECG reflects the internal changes described in this paper. The results show that the index derived from the ECG reflects the internal changes, which demonstrates the usefulness of stress assessment by the proposed method. Although the present study deals with a limited experimental condition, this methodology can also be applied to other types of stress