Wylie Glenn R, Yao Bing, Sandry Joshua, DeLuca John
Kessler Foundation, Rocco Ortenzio Neuroimaging Center, Kessler Foundation, West Orange, NJ, United States.
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, United States.
Front Psychol. 2021 Jan 15;11:579188. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.579188. eCollection 2020.
When we are fatigued, we feel that our performance is worse than when we are fresh. Yet, for over 100 years, researchers have been unable to identify an objective, behavioral measure that covaries with the subjective experience of fatigue. Previous work suggests that the metrics of signal detection theory (SDT)-response bias (criterion) and perceptual certainty (')-may change as a function of fatigue, but no work has yet been done to examine whether these metrics covary with fatigue. Here, we investigated cognitive fatigue using SDT. We induced fatigue through repetitive performance of the -back working memory task, while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data was acquired. We also assessed cognitive fatigue at intervals throughout. This enabled us to assess not only whether criterion and ' covary with cognitive fatigue but also whether similar patterns of brain activation underlie cognitive fatigue and SDT measures. Our results show that both criterion and ' were correlated with changes in cognitive fatigue: as fatigue increased, subjects became more conservative in their response bias and their perceptual certainty declined. Furthermore, activation in the striatum of the basal ganglia was also related to cognitive fatigue, criterion, and '. These results suggest that SDT measures represent an objective measure of cognitive fatigue. Additionally, the overlap and difference in the fMRI results between cognitive fatigue and SDT measures indicate that these measures are related while also separate. In sum, we show the relevance of SDT measures in the understanding of fatigue, thus providing researchers with a new set of tools with which to better understand the nature and consequences of cognitive fatigue.
当我们感到疲劳时，我们会觉得自己的表现比精力充沛时更差。然而，100多年来，研究人员一直未能找到一种与疲劳主观体验相关的客观行为测量方法。先前的研究表明，信号检测理论（SDT）的指标——反应偏差（标准）和感知确定性（'）——可能会随着疲劳程度而变化，但尚未有研究探讨这些指标是否与疲劳相关。在这里，我们使用SDT研究了认知疲劳。我们通过重复执行n-back工作记忆任务来诱发疲劳，同时采集功能磁共振成像（fMRI）数据。我们还在整个过程中间隔评估认知疲劳。这使我们不仅能够评估标准和'是否与认知疲劳相关，还能评估认知疲劳和SDT测量背后是否存在相似的脑激活模式。我们的结果表明，标准和'都与认知疲劳的变化相关：随着疲劳程度增加，受试者在反应偏差上变得更加保守，其感知确定性下降。此外，基底神经节纹状体的激活也与认知疲劳、标准和'有关。这些结果表明，SDT测量代表了一种认知疲劳的客观测量方法。此外，认知疲劳和SDT测量的fMRI结果之间的重叠和差异表明，这些测量方法既相关又相互独立。总之，我们展示了SDT测量在理解疲劳方面的相关性，从而为研究人员提供了一套新的工具，以便更好地理解认知疲劳的本质和后果。
