Analysis of Cognitive Fatigue using EEG
Parameters
Anwesha Sengupt Abishek Tiwari
Department of Electrical Engineering Robert Bosch Engineering
IIT Kharagpur and Business Solutions
West Bengal, India Bangalore
Email: majantali.sarkar@gmail.com Email: abhi.tiw1@gmail.com
Abstract—Continuous and repetitive performance of a task
is likely to induce a drop in alertness levels of an individual.
Changes in Electroencephalogram (EEG) have been proposed in
literature as a marker of alertness during repeated performance
of a cognitive task set. The present paper investigates the increase
in fatigue levels and resultant drop in alertness of subjects during
continuous performance of cognitive tasks by analyzing changes
in energy of EEG frequency bands. The trends reflected in the
EEG parameters correspond to a gradual increase in fatigue
levels of subjects with increase in cognitive loading
Index Terms—EEG, Alertness, Cognitive Fatigue, Auditory
Response Test, EEG Energ
I. I NTRODUCTION
Alertness in human beings may be defined as the state of
paying close and continuous attention. Tasks requiring vigi-
lance increase distress which rises with increasing difficulty
of the task [1]. A drop in alertness levels may be caused by
a number of factors, such as chronic kidney disease, high or
low blood sugar or thyroid hormone levels, liver failure, brain
infection, disorders or injury, heart or breathing problems such
as arrhythmia/hypoia, exposure to toxins or use / abuse of
drugs, and fatigue. Extended periods of effort on a single
task lead to decline in performance ([2], [3]); performance
of cognitively demanding tasks for a considerable span of
time is likely to induce mental fatigue,characterized by a
state of decreased cognitive performance ([4], [5], increased
resistance against further effort ([6], [7], [8]), and an increased
tendency towards less analytic information processing [9].
Maintenance of vigilance is essential in tasks that demand sus-
tained attention over an extended period, including air traffic
control, military surveillance, seaboard navigation, industrial
process/quality control, medical systems and long-distance
driving etc ([10], [11], [12], [13]).Reduction in alertness level
of operators involved in these tasks may lead to loss of lives
or damage to property ([14], [15]). Hence, it is important that
a drop in alertness be detected early, and appropriate counter-
measures be designed and deployed. Literature suggests that
a quantitative idea about the alertness or vigilance level of an
individual may be obtained from physiological signals such
as Electro-encephalogram. (EEG) ([8], [16]),ocular features
([17], [18], [19], [20], [21]),speech signals ([22],[23]) , skin
Aurobinda Routray
Department of Electrical Engineering )
IIT Kharagpur
West Bengal, India
Email: aurobinda.routray@gmail.com
conductance [24], blood samples ([25], [26]) etc., or from per-
formance in reaction-time/psychomotor tests. Of the physio-
logical parameters available for assessment of human alertness,
EEG and blood biochemical-based methods have reported the
best accuracy ([6], [27], [28]). Distribution, amplitude and
frequency of alpha waves in the EEG spectrum have been
found to change with the onset of fatigue.EEG has widely
been used to judge the alertness level of an individual during
monotonous tasks or tasks requiring sustained attention. Rel-
ative energy of different energy bands (alpha, beta, beta/alpha
ratio and (alpha+theta)/beta ratio) has often been used as
an indicator of fatigue [29]. The relative energy parameter
(alpha+theta)/beta has been found to decrease with a decrease
in alertness level[30]. Relative spectral amplitudes in alpha and
theta bands, as well as the mean frequency of the EEG spec-
trum, have been used to predict alertness level in an Auditory
Response Test (ART) [31]. The effects of mental fatigue on
alertness has been studied in an experiment in which subjects
performed a visual attention task for 3 hours continuously in
[32]. An increase was observed in EEG power in the theta
and lower-alpha bands, in addition to a drop in performance
efficiency and increase in reaction time. A positive relation
between EEG power and cognitive performance in the alpha
frequency range has been reported in [33] and alpha band has
been found to be the most important component for judging
alertness level in an expectancy task [34]. The present work
describes the results of an experiment designed to analyze
changes in alertness levels due to continuous cognitive loading
by repeated administration of standard alertness gauging tests.
EEG relative energy is analyzed during each stage of the
experiment to trace the changes in alertness levels caused by
cognitive fatigue. The paper is organized as follows. Section II
presents the methodology of the experiment, including details
of the experiment design and calculation of energy in EEG
bands. The results have been presented in Section III. Section
IV concludes the paper.
 II. METHODOLOGY
Thirty subjects (6 female, 24 male) (25.16±5.78 years)
in the age group 20-40 years were selected randomly from
graduate students and employees at IIT Kharagpur. Informed
consent was obtained from the subjects prior to their participa-
tion in the experiment and appropriate certificate of approval
was obtained from the Institute Ethical Committee at IIT
Kharagpur. The subjects were asked to complete two sets of
questionnaires prior to the commencement of the experiment
to judge suitability for undertaking the tests and for identifying
minor psychiatric disorders, if any. Prequestionnaire I was used
to collect information about the food habits, normal sleeping
times, vision, and normal duty hours of the subjects. The
subjects were also questioned about a possible history of major
physical or mental illness and/or addiction. Pre-questionnaire -
II was the GHQ-28 [35]. Use of stimulants such as tea, coffee,
etc. for the subjects was restricted for at least four hours before
the experiment. EEG, high-speed image sequence and speech
data were recorded during the experiment.
A. Experiment Design
The subjects were required to perform a test set devel-
oped by combining tasks that require sustained attention for
extended periods of time. A single stage of the experiment
comprised of one complete test set, followed by a question-
naire regarding subjective assessment of the level of cognitive
fatigue. The test battery comprised of:
• Stroop Task [36], [37],
• Letter Counting Test [38],
• Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) [39] comprising of an
Auditory Response Test (ART) and a Visual Response
Test (VRT)
The experiment was stopped when the subject complained of
extreme discomfort, or when the performance of the subject
revealed high levels of fatigue. The duration of the experiment
for a subject was around 1 hour and 30 minutes. The Auditory
Response Test used in the experiment consists of two variants:
in both cases, a random recorded sequence of 1s and 2s (total
40 in number) was played. In the first set, the subject was
required to press the same digit as the sound played (1 for
1 and 2 for 2). In the second round, he/she was required to
press the opposite digit as the sound (that is, 2 for 1 and 1 for
2).The two cases will henceforth be referred to as the ’direct’
and ’opposite’ input cases respectively.
B. EEG Preprocessing
EEG was recorded at a frequency of 256 Hz using 64 scalp
electrodes (Ag/AgCl, RMS,India) (in addition to reference and
ground) following the international 10-20 system. The raw
EEG signal is passed through a band-pass filter with cutoff
frequencies of 0.5 Hz and 30 Hz followed by normalization
of the data to ensure removal of power-line artifacts and
any unwanted bias that might have been introduced during
experimental recording. The EEG signal is decomposed into
Delta (δ) (0.5—4 Hz), Theta (θ) (4 —8 Hz), Alpha (α) (8—14
Hz) and Beta (β)(14—30 Hz) bands [40] using the Discrete
wavelet transform (DWT) technique using Daubechies wavelet
4[41]. The in-band ocular and muscular artifacts have been
removed by a wavelet thresholding approach [42].
C. Calculation of EEG Energy
The energy at the jth level of decomposition is computed
from the wavelet coefficients as
N
X
Ej = Cj2 (k)
k=1
Here Cj (k) is the wavelet coefficient and N is the total number
of wavelet coefficients at the j th level. Hence the relative
energy pj of a particular band represented by the j th level
is given by
Ej
pj = P
j Ej
III. RESULTS
The results for the variation of alpha and theta energy,
calculated from Equation (2) for various tests in the task
set have been shown in Fig. 1 —5. Since it was seen that
all the subjects could complete 10 stages of the experiment,
results for stages 1 —10 have been reported. Fig. 1 shows the
variation of energy for all subjects for the Auditory Response
Test (direct input). It may be seen that both these parameters
show a gradual increase with progression in stages. This is
indicative of the onset of fatigue and is in conjunction with
the trends reported in literature ([23], [32], [43]).
A similar trend has been observed for the opposite input case.
Fig. 1. Variation of Theta and Alpha Energy for Auditory Response Test
(Direct Input)
The variation of energy in the theta and alpha bands for
all subjects for the Stroop Task, Letter Counting Test and
Psychomotor Vigilance Test has been shown in Fig. 2. Here,
too, the variation corresponds to rends reported in literature
and follows an overall increasing trend with progression in
stages. The drop in some intermediate stages may be attributed
to a conscious effort on the part of the subjects to force
alertness. An increase in fatigue levels and a corresponding
drop in alertness of subjects with advancement in stages is
also suggested by the variation of ratio of alpha and theta
energy to the sum of energy in the lower and higher delta

Fig. 2. Variation of alpha and theta energy for Stroop Test, Letter Counting
Test and Psychomotor Vigilance Test.
bands for the Auditory Response Test(Direct Input) in Fig.3.
A steady
Fig. 3. Ratio of Alpha and Theta to Delta Energy for Auditory Response
Test(Direct Input)
rise in alpha and theta energy may also be observed in
Fig. 4 for Stroop test for subject 2. The variation of alpha
energy for the Letter Counting Task for Subject 6 shows an
interesting trend in Fig. 5. A steady increase in the first few
stages is succeeded by a drop in stages 5 7 , followed by a
further gradual increase towards the final stages. The nature
may be explained by an initial increase in mental fatigue due
to the novelty of the test, which is followed by an increase
in alertness level because of a conscious effort on the part
of the subject. The trend reflects a gradual increase in alpha
energy and hence a decline in alertness level towards the final
stages. The results obtained were found to correspond to the
subjective assessment, as shown in Fig. 6.
IV. CONCLUSION
The present paper makes use of EEG energy to assess
changes in fatigue levels of subjects in an experiment to
Fig. 4. Variation of Alpha and Theta Energy for Stroop Test for Subject 2
Fig. 5. Variation of Alpha Energy for Letter Counting Task for Subject 6
induce fatigue in subjects through continuous and repeated
Fig. 6. Variation of Average Subjective Scores for Subjects
performance of cognitive tasks. Results establish the efficacy
of EEG energy parameters as markers of alertness and atten-
tion levels. The trends in variation of EEG energy for various
tests show an agreement and reflect a gradual increase in
fatigue levels of subjects with increase in cognitive loading.
More significant changes in fatigue levels of subjects may
be achieved by modifying experimental conditions to enable
subjects to continue the tests for a higher number of stages. A
correlation study between energy values and other measures of
alertness, as well as between bio markers and results of neuro
psychological tests, would be useful in studying the decline
of alertness due to cognitive fatigue.
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