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• Posted May 15, 2026

New Wearable Polygraph Tracks Hidden Stress In Babies, Adults

A new wearable polygraph might be able to help infants and adults not by detecting lies, but instead by monitoring their stress levels, researchers say.

Instead of falsehoods, this polygraph is designed to sense underlying stress that’s hidden deep within the body, researchers reported May 13 in the journal Science Advances.

“Sometimes, the body manifests signs of stress before a person is consciously aware of it,” said senior researcher John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering and neurological surgery at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

“Even if people don’t realize how much pressure they are under, stress is quietly affecting their health,” he said in a news release. “Prolonged stress can have adverse consequences, especially for pregnant mothers, children and critically ill patients.”

The lightweight, bandage-like device gently adheres to the chest, tracking heart rate, breathing patterns, sweat, blood flow and temperature – essentially capturing real-time, whole-body signs of stress.

Researchers developed the polygraph at the request of pediatricians at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, to help track stress levels in babies throughout their hospital stay.

Currently, caregivers have to depend solely on what they see and hear to track stress in babies, including crying, facial expressions and movement, researchers said. But these signals can be inconsistent at best.

“Stress is often scored using survey sheets and nursing assessments,” Rogers said. “The entries include things like tonality and volume of crying. Infants obviously cannot describe their own pain levels. So, unlike with adults, determining stress in babies can be incredibly challenging. We wanted to take subjectivity out of these assessments.”

The device also is able to track stress signals around the clock, which could help people figure out how long they’re stressed each day and the intensity of stress spikes, said researcher Dr. Debra Weese-Mayer, a professor of pediatric autonomic medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.

“The beauty of the device is that both individuals and healthcare providers can now identify stress and objectively monitor the effectiveness of interventions to decrease stress and restore a healthy balance, in a completely non-invasive manner,” she said in a news release.

The research team turned toward polygraphs, because these devices detect lies by measuring the body’s response to stress.

“Measuring stress is a complex task because it’s multi-dimensional,” Rogers said. “It’s not possible to reliably determine stress by measuring just one or two, or even three or four, parameters. A broad collection of factors is necessary. So, we crammed as many sensors of physiological processes into this device platform as we could, while maintaining a compact size and lightweight construction and avoiding the need to access biofluids.”

In tests, the device detected clear increases in stress when people were challenged by sensitive questions, given difficult tasks to perform or made uncomfortable by placing their hands in ice-cold water.

And in tests in ER training sessions with medical students, the device revealed that those with stronger stress responses tended to perform worse, suggesting stress can impair decision-making in high-pressure situations.

“Ultimately, the device could send an alert to a user or caregiver when stress levels hit a certain limit,” Rogers said. “Many people might not fully appreciate the level of stress they are under and might not realize it’s affecting their performance.”

Researchers next plan to test the device in larger patient groups to further refine its ability to detect stress.

Researchers also are considering ways to improve the device by adding the ability to measure brain activity, which might help distinguish stress from pain.

“We are living in stressful times, without sufficient measures to proactively detect stress,” Weese-Mayer said. “By identifying stress — whether environmental or disease-induced — earlier, we can introduce intervention before stress’ effects become irreversible.”

More information

The American Psychological Association has more on stress and the body.

SOURCE: Northwestern University, news release, May 13, 2026