Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Fatigue is a complex physiological state that involves tiredness, loss of focus and a decrease in mental processing ability.Severe physical and mental pressures are associated with job responsibilities in many professions.Since fatigue can affect a person's physical and mental wellbeing, it puts professionals such as firefighters, pilots and miners at risk; along with those whom they serve.This work explores the utility and feasibility of a software platform utilizing BCI2000 © and Matlab ® with respect to fatigue assessment.The described system runs testing applications, acquires brainwave data, and allows for some signal processing and analysis of the results.This project also presents work done towards developing a prototype and suggested improvements to the data analysis methods.This work includes results from pilot studies conducted to assess the ability of an ERP based test to assess fatigue.Since ERPs can be generated with any kind of stimulus, audio, visual or tactile; audio and visual testing programs were compared.During the course of the research conducted user, subject and systemic needs were assessed.Preliminary results were promising and indicated that ERPs can be used to measure changes in alertness and physical tiredness.Results also indicate that audio testing is preferable for real-world scenarios.BCI2000 © and Matlab ® are suitable programs for such applications.However, Matlab ® is an expensive and powerful platform that has capabilities beyond what is required for simple targeted applications.BCI2000 © has the advantage of being open-source but not have the most efficient programs.Thus recommendations for simpler software platform or a customized version of BCI2000 © have been made.Understanding and testing of applications, set-up and analysis methods is an important first step in the development of a custom, comprehensive EEG-based system for fatigue assessment.
Author: Pooja Kadambi
Institution: University of Cincinnati
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2302192394