An evaluation of mental workload with frontal EEG

PLoS One. 2017 Apr 17;12(4):e0174949. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174949. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Using a wireless single channel EEG device, we investigated the feasibility of using short-term frontal EEG as a means to evaluate the dynamic changes of mental workload. Frontal EEG signals were recorded from twenty healthy subjects performing four cognitive and motor tasks, including arithmetic operation, finger tapping, mental rotation and lexical decision task. Our findings revealed that theta activity is the common EEG feature that increases with difficulty across four tasks. Meanwhile, with a short-time analysis window, the level of mental workload could be classified from EEG features with 65%-75% accuracy across subjects using a SVM model. These findings suggest that frontal EEG could be used for evaluating the dynamic changes of mental workload.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study

MeSH terms

  • Cognition
  • Electroencephalography / instrumentation
  • Electroencephalography / methods*
  • Electroencephalography / statistics & numerical data
  • Feasibility Studies
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Models, Psychological
  • Psychomotor Performance
  • Support Vector Machine
  • Task Performance and Analysis*
  • Theta Rhythm
  • Workload / psychology*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

The work described in this paper was supported by grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [Project No. CityU110813, ECS-28403414] the Innovation and Technology Fund (ITS/139/14FX, ITS/141/14FX) provided by the Innovation and Technology Commission, HKSAR and Research Support Scheme 2016/2017 of the Department of Special Education and Counselling at the Education University of Hong Kong. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material/event (or by members of the project team) do not reflect the views of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Innovation and Technology Commission or the Panel of Assessors for the Innovation and Technology Support Programme of the Innovation and Technology Fund. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The funder provided support in the form of salaries for author JNM, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of this author are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.