Frequently asked questions

As a rule, SYMBIOLINE Professional is suitable for any patient. However, we advise against using it for:
- Paranoid or schizophrenic patients, highly depressive patients, and obsessional patients.
- Very young children (they are not able to understand and act upon breathing movements)
- Pacemaker patients

• Both professional users and patients should be fully aware of the objectives and the limitations of our technology.
• SYMBIOLINE is an ideal tool for therapeutic approaches that choose a holistic, multidimensional strategy to address stress and anxiety.
• SYMBIOLINE cannot be used as an alternative to a prescribed medical treatment. Besides, SYMBIOLINE is not a substitute for proper medical care if the patient’s health status requires it.
• Better results will be obtained if the user is guided by a healthcare professional when using SYMBIOLINE. Results are also better if SYMBIOLINE is used in conjunction with other techniques such as psychotherapies, stress management training, physiotherapeutic rehabilitation, relaxation, pharmacological treatments, or more specific treatments.
• Patient motivation, commitment, and compliance are crucial to ensure success.

Therapists should comfort patients if they do not manage to reach a state of full cardiac coherence.

• It is recommended to tell patients that they need to keep trying to reach a state of cardiac coherence. Patients should be told that by striving to reach it, they will improve their self-control and gradually obtain significant results.
• It is essential to motivate the patient through regular practice. It is the only way of making progress. Through practice, the patient will learn to deal with the negative effects of stress in everyday life.
• Patients should be comforted and encouraged to carry on, even though they do not reach cardiac coherence immediately: they should be told that their heart rate variability is perfectly normal.
• Patients should be advised that what counts most is their ability to better adapt to stressful situations. Adaptability is the tool that will help them fight the negative effects of emotions on their health.

Stress and emotion management techniques, breathing control techniques, and relaxation techniques can help patients achieve cardiac coherence. Therapists should help patients master these techniques in order to improve cardiac coherence.
Patients can also use these techniques on their own, for example with SYMBIOLINE’s relaxation exercises. Reading self-help guides in which these techniques are described is also very useful.

Make sure that you have properly connected the ECG sensor to your PC (the sensor’s black case should be connected to the PC by the USB cable).

1.If your laptop or your desktop is connected to power supply, ensure that the plug is plugged into an outlet that is properly earthed. If the outlet is not earthed, the signal may be affected by interference.

2. Check that you have properly fastened the 3 bracelets around your wrists and that the conducting band is against your skin. Check that you have fastened 2 bracelets on your right wrist, and 1 bracelet only on your left wrist.

3. Make sure that the cable with the red mark (it is the earthing cable) is properly connected on your right wrist.

4. Wait until your electrode bracelets polarize properly: this may take 2 to 3 minutes, then the signal’s quality become optimal. The explanation for this is that your electrical cardiac signal may need some time to stabilize.

5. Make sure that no other PC is operating close to your SYMBIOLINE devices (for example, you may have a laptop in the vicinity of your desktop). This may cause electromagnetic interference. Similarly, a mobile phone that is turned on, an electrical adapter, or any other electrical device may cause interference and affect the performance of the SYMBIOLINE solution.

6. If the signal is still weak or blurred, test the sensor on another person. Skin conductance can vary: some people have better skin conductance than others.

7. Clean the bracelets by rinsing them under the faucet. DO NOT USE DETERGENT or any other cleaning product.

8. Carefully follow the instructions for use. In particular, do not move your arms or your hands whilst using SYMBIOLINE.

9. If above instructions do not help, unplug all the cables. Start over and execute the installation procedure again, carefully following the instructions in the user’s guide.

This may be due to two causes:

1. The signal is poor—bracelets have not been installed correctly, or the patient’s forearms are tensed or moving, etc.

2. Your PC configuration is not suitable for using SYMBIOLINE. In particular, your computer’s RAM capabilities may not be sufficient to allow SYMBIOLINE’s measurement engine to analyze the patient’s heart rate variability and communicate with the 3D video interface simultaneously.
Solution: upgrade your graphics card, or add RAM to your computer.

Please note that if erroneous values appear very briefly, this will not prevent SYMBIOLINE from delivering very accurate results—SYMBIOLINE’s measurement engine includes an intelligent, patented filtering device which corrects these errors in real time.

Rinse the bracelets under a faucet. DO NOT use detergents or any other cleaning agent: this could cause critical damage to the bracelets.

It is recommended to purchase a new set of bracelets from SYMBIOFI’s E-Store.

It is recommended to purchase a new set of ECG cables from SYMBIOFI’s E-Store.

YES, of course. SYMBIOLINE’s built-in modularity allows to use disposable self-sticking electrodes (with the proviso that their diameter is 4mm.)

We strongly recommend not to use any additional products. Our bracelets have been designed to be used without any additional accessories or products.

It is recommended to use SYMBIOLINE Professional on a Windows XP or Windows Vista platform.

Minimum configuration requirements for windowed mode

Intel Pentium® III 800 MHz or AMD Athlon® 800 MHz CPU
512 Mo RAM
500 Mo free space on the hard drive (1 Go recommended)
32 bits color display, 800 x 600
3D compatible graphics accelerator card (64 Mo Nvidia or ATI graphics card recommended)
Direct X 9.0 with relevant driver
CD-ROM drive
USB port

Minimal configuration requirements for full-screen mode

Intel Pentium® IV 1.5 GHz or AMD Athlon® XP 1.5 GHz CPU
1024 Mo RAM
1Go free space on the hard drive
32 bits color display, 1024 x 800
3D compatible graphics accelerator card (128 Mo Nvidia or ATI graphics card recommended)
Direct X 9.0 with relevant driver
CD-ROM drive
USB port

1. Check that your computer complies with the recommended minimum configuration requirements for the windowed mode or the full-screen mode.

2. Download relevant upgrades for your graphics card. This allows to solve most problems.
- Right-click on “My Computer”
- Choose “Properties”
- Click on the Hardware tab
- Choose “Device manager”
- Click on “Graphics card”
- Choose “Properties”
- Choose “Driver”
- Identify your graphics card’s specifications and download the latest driver from the manufacturer’s website

3. The exercise entitled “at the beach” uses videos requiring the Xvid codec. This may cause conflicts with codecs previously installed on your PC. If the DivX codec or the DivX player have been installed previously, it is necessary to uninstall them prior to using SYMBIOLINE.

SYMBIOLINE Professional has been optimized for a 1024 x 768 display mode. Please note that the heart rate variability expert module will not function properly is this mode has not been activated.
- Right-click on your PC’s “Desktop”
- Choose “Properties”
- Then, in “Parameters,” choose 1024 x 768

If, after creating a profile, an error message appears, or if the software program freezes, we recommend to follow the method for deleting a profile that is described in the section Biofeedback module - deleting a profile. If this does not work, it is necessary to erase the profile in the root file:
- Go to the directory where SYMBIOLINE Professional has been installed (C: is the default directory).
- Double-click on the “Profiles” directory.
- Erase the file containing the profile that you want to delete.

If you wish to delete a result :
- Go to the directory where SYMBIOLINE Professional has been installed (C: is the default directory).
- Double-click on the “Profiles” directory.
- Double-click on the personal directory containing the erroneous result.
- Delete the relevant (.sfi) file.