[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"branding":3,"analytics":7,"article-wearable-sensors-learn-to-tell-craving-from-stress":10,"sections":35},{"siteName":4,"siteTagline":5,"publisherName":4,"contactEmail":6},"The Revision","Tech news, decoded.","editor@therevision.news",{"gaMeasurementId":8,"adsenseClientId":9},"G-ZW2MV82GYR","ca-pub-8533917693782264",{"article":11},{"id":12,"slug":13,"title":14,"dek":15,"body_md":16,"tags_json":17,"published_at":18,"created_at":19,"updated_at":20,"status":21,"review_note":22,"review_notes":23,"image_url":22,"persona_id":22,"persona_name":22,"section":24,"tags":25,"sources":30,"feedback":34,"feedback_at":22,"cost_usd":34,"total_tokens":34},5147,"wearable-sensors-learn-to-tell-craving-from-stress","Wearable Sensors Learn to Tell Craving From Stress","A new model called RETRACE uses resilience data to separate opioid craving signals from stress in wearable sensor readings.","Wearable sensors might soon be able to tell the difference between opioid craving and everyday stress - the two currently look nearly identical to a smartwatch.\n\nResearchers built RETRACE, a machine-learning framework that reads wearable physiology, think heart rate and related signals, to flag opioid craving without mistaking it for garden-variety stress. The core problem is that stress produces loud, reliable signals on wearables, while craving is faint and buried inside that same stress response. The team's fix uses a person's psychological resilience as context: since resilience cannot be read directly from a short sensor window, RETRACE infers it from proxies like how fast someone's heart rate recovers after stress and how they narrate their own memories. A dual-encoder setup then splits general stress physiology from person-specific craving interpretation, using gating and fusion to personalize predictions without needing craving labels from the target user.\n\nOn a new multimodal dataset combining wearable data, stress and craving annotations, and personal narratives, RETRACE beat the strongest baseline by up to 7 percentage points in leave-one-subject-out tests - meaning it generalized to people it never trained on, the hard part for any wearable health tool. That distinction matters for opioid use disorder specifically, where a false alarm or missed craving could shape whether someone gets a timely check-in instead of nothing at all. Most consumer wearables already track heart rate variability; the gap has been turning that noisy signal into something clinically useful for one person, not just a population average.\n\nIt's still a research paper built on a single custom dataset, not a product - and resilience proxies like memory-recall exercises aren't something your smartwatch app is going to run before breakfast. Leave-one-subject-out testing is a reasonable stand-in for whether this works on a stranger, but it's not the same as deployment in the wild.","[\"opioid use disorder\",\"wearables\",\"machine learning\",\"digital health\"]","2026-08-18T04:00:00.000Z","2026-08-18T07:01:42.741Z","2026-08-18T07:01:54.806Z","published",null,[],"ai",[26,27,28,29],"opioid use disorder","wearables","machine learning","digital health",[31],{"name":32,"url":33},"arXiv cs.AI","https:\u002F\u002Farxiv.org\u002Fabs\u002F2608.14947",0,{"sections":36},[37,41,45,50,55,60,65,70,75,79,84,89,94,99],{"name":38,"slug":24,"count":39,"latest_published_at":40},"AI",3293,"2026-08-20T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":42,"slug":43,"count":44,"latest_published_at":40},"Security","security",435,{"name":46,"slug":47,"count":48,"latest_published_at":49},"Policy","policy",210,"2026-08-19T09:32:27.000Z",{"name":51,"slug":52,"count":53,"latest_published_at":54},"Deals","deals",179,"2026-06-29T20:02:07.000Z",{"name":56,"slug":57,"count":58,"latest_published_at":59},"Hardware","hardware",140,"2026-08-19T18:25:42.000Z",{"name":61,"slug":62,"count":63,"latest_published_at":64},"Consumer Tech","consumer-tech",95,"2026-08-18T16:05:00.000Z",{"name":66,"slug":67,"count":68,"latest_published_at":69},"Science","science",90,"2026-08-19T18:41:02.000Z",{"name":71,"slug":72,"count":73,"latest_published_at":74},"Software","software",73,"2026-08-18T07:51:50.000Z",{"name":76,"slug":77,"count":78,"latest_published_at":18},"Dev Tools","dev-tools",69,{"name":80,"slug":81,"count":82,"latest_published_at":83},"Startups","startups",47,"2026-08-19T19:13:46.000Z",{"name":85,"slug":86,"count":87,"latest_published_at":88},"Gaming","gaming",41,"2026-07-09T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":90,"slug":91,"count":92,"latest_published_at":93},"General","general",33,"2026-08-18T22:18:13.000Z",{"name":95,"slug":96,"count":97,"latest_published_at":98},"Reviews","reviews",20,"2026-06-24T12:00:01.000Z",{"name":100,"slug":101,"count":102,"latest_published_at":103},"How-To","how-to",6,"2026-06-16T09:00:00.000Z"]