The effect of mental schema evolution on mental workload measurement: an EEG study with simulated quadrotor UAV operation

Yao, Qunli; Chen, He; Ding, Zhaohuan; Zhao, Xiaochuan; Liu, Huapeng; Feng, Yunpeng; Li, Chen; Gu, Heng

doi:10.1088/1741-2552/ac6828

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…These findings were similar to previous research on the patterns of band power changes due to stress when participants were asked to perform a time-limited examination task [53]. Similarly, Gu et al [54] suggested that the decrease in theta power is a symptom of increased mental effort in a state of increased task stress, which is consistent with previous studies [55]. Theta band might facilitate recurring cycles of integration across multiple inputs (environment, reward, memory) to inform controlled action choices [56], and therefore a decline in theta activity might suggest a decline in this integration capacity.…”

Section: Critical Frequency Bands For Emotion Recognitionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Exploring EEG characteristics of multi-level mental stress based on human–machine system

Yao,

Gu,

Wang

et al. 2023

J. Neural Eng.

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Objective:The understanding of cognitive states is important for the development of human-machine systems, and one of the fundamental but challenging issues is the understanding and assessment of the operator's mental stress state in real task scenarios. Approach: In this paper, a virtual unmanned vehicle (UAV) driving task with multi-challenge-level was created to explore the operator's mental stress, and the human brain activity during the task was tracked in real time via EEG. A mental stress analysis dataset for the virtual UAV task was then developed and used to explore the neural activation patterns associated with mental stress activity. Finally, a multiple attention-based convolutional neural network (MACN) was constructed for automatic stress assessment using the extracted stress-sensitive neural activation features.Main Results:The statistical results of EEG power spectral density (PSD) showed that frontal θ-PSD decreased with increasing task difficulty, and central β-PSD increased with increasing task difficulty, indicating that neural patterns showed different trends under different levels of mental stress. The performance of the proposed MACN was evaluated based on the dimensional model, and results showed that average three-class classification accuracies of 89.49% / 89.88% were respectively achieved for arousal / valence. Significance: The results of this paper suggest that objective assessment of mental stress in a human-machine system based on a virtual UAV scenario is feasible, and the proposed method provides a promising solution for cognitive computing and applications in human-machine tasks.

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Section: Critical Frequency Bands For Emotion Recognitionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Exploring EEG characteristics of multi-level mental stress based on human–machine system

Yao,

Gu,

Wang

et al. 2023

J. Neural Eng.

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“…The assessment of EEG correlates of force exertions should also consider the effects of perceptual and cognitive processes [94]. Moreover, we acknowledge that the reported EEG results could be partially affected by high individual differences among the participants and the limitations of power spectra density measures [95]. Future studies should include a much larger study of male and female populations to increase the power of the investigated relationships between the exerted forces, physical comfort, and their EEG signatures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Isometric Arm Forces Exerted by Females at Different Levels of Physical Comfort and Their EEG Signatures

et al. 2023

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A variety of subjective measures have traditionally been used to assess the perception of physical exertion at work and related body responses. However, the current understanding of physical comfort experienced at work is very limited. The main objective of this study was first to investigate the magnitude of isometric arm forces exerted by females at different levels of physical comfort measured on a new comfort scale and, second, to assess their corresponding neural signatures expressed in terms of power spectral density (PSD). The study assessed PSDs of four major electroencephalography (EEG) frequency bands, focusing on the brain regions controlling motor and perceptual processing. The results showed statistically significant differences in exerted arm forces and the rate of perceived exertion at the various levels of comfort. Significant differences in power spectrum density at different physical comfort levels were found for the beta EEG band. Such knowledge can be useful in incorporating female users’ force requirements in the design of consumer products, including tablets, laptops, and other hand-held information technology devices, as well as various industrial processes and work systems.

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“…All participants gave written informed consent before participation and underwent 10-day UAV flight training. A more detailed description is provided in a previously published article [ 32 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…( a ) Simulated UAV operation tasks and experimental environment. ( b ) Schematic of the study procedure (adopted from Gu et al, 2022 [ 32 ]).…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Efficiency of the Brain Network Is Associated with the Mental Workload with Developed Mental Schema

Chen

Yao

et al. 2023

Brain Sciences

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The study of mental workload has attracted much interest in neuroergonomics, a frontier field of research. However, there appears no consensus on how to measure mental workload effectively because the mental workload is not only regulated by task difficulty but also affected by individual skill level reflected as mental schema. In this study, we investigated the alterations in the functional brain network induced by a 10-day simulated piloting task with different difficulty levels. Topological features quantifying global and local information communication and network organization were analyzed. It was found that during different tests, the global efficiency did not change, but the gravity center of the local efficiency of the network moved from the frontal to the posterior area; the small-worldness of the functional brain network became stronger. These results demonstrate the reconfiguration of the brain network during the development of mental schema. Furthermore, for the first two tests, the global and local efficiency did not have a consistent change trend under different difficulty levels, but after forming the developed mental schema, both of them decreased with the increase in task difficulty, showing sensitivity to the increase in mental workload. Our results demonstrate brain network reconfiguration during the motor learning process and reveal the importance of the developed mental schema for the accurate assessment of mental workload. We concluded that the efficiency of the brain network was associated with mental workload with developed mental schema.

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The effect of mental schema evolution on mental workload measurement: an EEG study with simulated quadrotor UAV operation

Cited by 12 publications

References 69 publications

Exploring EEG characteristics of multi-level mental stress based on human–machine system

Exploring EEG characteristics of multi-level mental stress based on human–machine system

Isometric Arm Forces Exerted by Females at Different Levels of Physical Comfort and Their EEG Signatures

Efficiency of the Brain Network Is Associated with the Mental Workload with Developed Mental Schema

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