Detection of Temporary Rest State while Performing Mental Works by Measuring Physiological Indices

Abstract

Several studies aimed at evaluating intellectual productivity and specially designed tasks were given. However, the result may not be reflected the actual intellectual productivity because the designed tasks are different from office works. Meanwhile, there are two mental states (work and temporary rest state) in office workers which are changing alternatively during mental work. If the mental states of the workers can be detected, the productivity can be measured more accurately. In this study, the authors aimed at developing a detection method of temporary rest state while performing mental works by measuring physiological indices such as EEG, ECG, and EMG of extraocular muscles and orbicularis oculi muscle. From these measured indices, the authors extracted 6 features which were alpha and beta brain waves, low and high frequency waves of heart rate, and the intervals of eye blink and saccade eye movement. They were used to detect a temporary rest state by using Mahalanobis Discrimination Analysis. As a result of the subject experiment, it was found that the detection accuracy was 80.2%. This result shows the possibility to use the physiological indices as one of the mental state detection methods.