Sciaraffa Nicolina, Di Flumeri Gianluca, Germano Daniele, Giorgi Andrea, Di Florio Antonio, Borghini Gianluca, Vozzi Alessia, Ronca Vincenzo, Varga Rodrigo, van Gasteren Marteyn, Babiloni Fabio, Aricò Pietro
BrainSigns Srl, Lungotevere Michelangelo 9, 00192 Rome, Italy.
Department of Molecular Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Brain Sci. 2022 Feb 24;12(3):304. doi: 10.3390/brainsci12030304.
Driver's stress affects decision-making and the probability of risk occurrence, and it is therefore a key factor in road safety. This suggests the need for continuous stress monitoring. This work aims at validating a stress neurophysiological measure-a Neurometric-for out-of-the-lab use obtained from lightweight EEG relying on two wet sensors, in real-time, and without calibration. The Neurometric was tested during a multitasking experiment and validated with a realistic driving simulator. Twenty subjects participated in the experiment, and the resulting stress Neurometric was compared with the Random Forest (RF) model, calibrated by using EEG features and both intra-subject and cross-task approaches. The Neurometric was also compared with a measure based on skin conductance level (SCL), representing one of the physiological parameters investigated in the literature mostly correlated with stress variations. We found that during both multitasking and realistic driving experiments, the Neurometric was able to discriminate between low and high levels of stress with an average Area Under Curve (AUC) value higher than 0.9. Furthermore, the stress Neurometric showed higher AUC and stability than both the SCL measure and the RF calibrated with a cross-task approach. In conclusion, the Neurometric proposed in this work proved to be suitable for out-of-the-lab monitoring of stress levels.
驾驶员的压力会影响决策以及风险发生的概率,因此它是道路安全的一个关键因素。这表明需要进行持续的压力监测。这项工作旨在验证一种压力神经生理学测量方法——神经测量法,用于在实验室外使用,该方法通过依赖两个湿电极传感器的轻便脑电图实时获取,且无需校准。在一项多任务实验中对神经测量法进行了测试,并使用逼真的驾驶模拟器进行了验证。20名受试者参与了该实验,并将所得的压力神经测量值与通过使用脑电图特征以及受试者内和跨任务方法进行校准的随机森林(RF)模型进行了比较。还将神经测量法与基于皮肤电导水平(SCL)的测量方法进行了比较,SCL是文献中研究的与压力变化最相关的生理参数之一。我们发现,在多任务和逼真驾驶实验期间,神经测量法能够区分低压力水平和高压力水平,平均曲线下面积(AUC)值高于0.9。此外,压力神经测量法的AUC和稳定性均高于SCL测量法以及采用跨任务方法校准的RF。总之,这项工作中提出的神经测量法被证明适用于实验室外压力水平的监测。