ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Netw. Physiol.
Sec. Systems Interactions and Organ Networks
Assessing Effects of Vibroacoustic Stimulation Compared to a Guided Mindfulness Meditation Using the Biosignal of Human Speech
1. University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
2. Syddansk Universitet, Odense, Denmark
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Abstract
High stress and low well-being pose severe individual, societal and economic threats, and there is a pressing demand for non-invasive stress reduction tools. This exploratory pilot study assessed the efficacy of speech prosody as a biosignal for stress elicitation, when comparing relaxation outcomes of two interventions with a control group. Thirty participants were divided into three treatment groups; (1) guided mindfulness meditation (2) vibroacoustic intervention (3) control. All participants read aloud a text before and after one 20-minute treatment. The sixty readings were assessed using a multi-parametric acoustic-prosodic analysis, and within-speaker differences were compared between the initial and final reading. Results show groups (1) and (2) spoke with a breathier vocal quality in the second reading, while group (3) speech was tenser and at a lower, less variable loudness. Results demonstrate speech prosody is a sensitive biomarker for treatment-effect classification and evaluation. Practical limitations and future research perspectives are discussed.
Summary
Keywords
biosignal, Meditation, speech prosody, stress, Vibroacoustic, Well-being
Received
31 July 2025
Accepted
19 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Fooks and Niebuhr. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Charlotte Fooks
Disclaimer
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