Abstract
The purpose of this study is to clarify the modulatory effects of hand bath on autonomic nervous system. For that, we tested hand bath on both high sympathetic and high parasympathetic conditions respectively, which induced by experimental intervention. Participants are all healthy volunteers. In the high-sympathetic condition, the hand bath suppressed the sympathetic activation by mental arithmetic task. On the other hand, the hand bath activated sympathetic activity under the parasympathetic activated condition by rest. These findings indicated that the hand bath has modulating effect on autonomic nervous system by suppress the sympathetic activity under high-sympathetic condition, and by activate the sympathetic system under high-parasympathetic condition respectively.
