Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research (대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지)

The Korean Society of Medical and Biological Engineering (대한의용생체공학회)
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Changes in Electrophysiological Activation Due to Different Levels of Cognitive Load

인지부하의 정도에 따른 뇌신경생리학적 변화

  • Kwon, Joo-Hee (Interdisciplinary Program of Biomedical Engineering, Chonnam National University) ;
  • Kim, Euijin (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University) ;
  • Kim, Jeonghui (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Chonnam National University) ;
  • Im, Chang-Hwan (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University) ;
  • Kim, Do-Won (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Chonnam National University)
  • 권주희 (전남대학교 의공학협동과정) ;
  • 김의진 (한양대학교 생체의공학과) ;
  • 김정희 (전남대학교 바이오메디컬공학협동과정) ;
  • 임창환 (한양대학교 생체의공학과) ;
  • 김도원 (전남대학교 바이오메디컬공학협동과정)
  • Received : 2022.01.28
  • Accepted : 2022.02.10
  • Published : 2022.02.28
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Abstract

Purpose: For now, cognitive load is assessed based on survey-based methods, which can be difficult to track the amount of cognitive load in real-time. In this study, we investigated the difference in electrophysiological activation due to different levels of cognitive load not only at sensor-level but also at source-level using electroencephalogram that might be potentially used for quantitative cognitive load evaluation. Materials and Methods: In this study, ten healthy subjects (mean age 24.3 ± 2.1, three female) participated the experiment. All participants performed 4 sessions of n-back task in different difficulties: 0-, 1-, 2-, and 3-back during electroencephalogram recording. For sensor-level analysis, we calculated the event-related potential and event-related spectral perturbation while low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) to estimate the source activation. Each result was compared between different workload conditions using statistical analysis. Results: Statistical results revealed that the accuracy of the task performance was significantly different between different cognitive loads (p = 0.018). The post-hoc analysis confirmed that the accuracy of the 3-back task was significantly decreased compared to 1-back condition (p = 0.018), but not with 2-back condition (p = 0.180). ERP results showed that P300 target amplitude between 1-back and 3-back had a marginal difference in Cz (p = 0.059) and Pz(p = 0.093). A significant inhibition in Cz high-beta activation (p = 0.017) and decrease in source activation of right parahippocampal gyrus was found in 3-back condition compared to 1-back condition (p < 0.05). Conclusion: In this study, we compared the sensor- and source-level differences in electroencephalogram between different levels of cognitive load, that were found to be in line with the previous reports related to cognitive load evaluation. We expect that the outcome of the current study can be used as a feature to establish a quantitative cognitive load assessment system.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

이 논문은 전남대학교 학술연구비(신진연)로 지원에 의하여 연구되었음(과제번호: 2018-0921).

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