Martínez Vásquez David Alejandro, Posada-Quintero Hugo F, Rivera Pinzón Diego Mauricio
Electronic Engineering Faculty, Universidad Santo Tomás, Bogotá 110231, Colombia.
Department of Technology, Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Bogotá 110221, Colombia.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2023 Aug 25;13(9):707. doi: 10.3390/bs13090707.
Sleep deprivation, a widespread phenomenon that affects one-third of normal American adults, induces adverse changes in physical and cognitive performance, which in turn increases the occurrence of accidents. Sleep deprivation is known to increase resting blood pressure and decrease muscle sympathetic nerve activity. Monitoring changes in the interplay between the central and autonomic sympathetic nervous system can be a potential indicator of human's readiness to perform tasks that involve a certain level of cognitive load (e.g., driving). The electroencephalogram (EEG) is the standard to assess the brain's activity. The electrodermal activity (EDA) is a reflection of the general state of arousal regulated by the activation of the sympathetic nervous system through sweat gland stimulation. In this work, we calculated the mutual information between EDA and EEG recordings in order to consider linear and non-linear interactions and provide an insight of the relationship between brain activity and peripheral autonomic sympathetic activity. We analyzed EEG and EDA data from ten participants performing four cognitive tasks every two hours during 24 h (12 trials). We decomposed EEG data into delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma spectral components, and EDA into tonic and phasic components. The results demonstrate high values of mutual information between the EDA and delta component of EEG, mainly in working memory tasks. Additionally, we found an increase in the theta component of EEG in the presence of fatigue caused by sleep deprivation, the alpha component in tasks demanding inhibition and attention, and the delta component in working memory tasks. In terms of the location of brain activity, most of the tasks report high mutual information in frontal regions in the initial trials, with a trend to decrease and become uniform for all the nine analyzed EEG channels as a consequence of the sleep deprivation effect. Our results evidence the interplay between central and sympathetic nervous activity and can be used to mitigate the consequences of sleep deprivation.
睡眠剥夺是一种广泛存在的现象，影响着三分之一的美国正常成年人，会导致身体和认知表现出现不良变化，进而增加事故发生率。已知睡眠剥夺会使静息血压升高，并降低肌肉交感神经活动。监测中枢和自主交感神经系统之间相互作用的变化，可能是衡量人类准备好执行涉及一定认知负荷任务（如驾驶）的一个潜在指标。脑电图（EEG）是评估大脑活动的标准。皮肤电活动（EDA）反映了通过汗腺刺激由交感神经系统激活所调节的一般觉醒状态。在这项研究中，我们计算了EDA与EEG记录之间的互信息，以考虑线性和非线性相互作用，并深入了解大脑活动与外周自主交感活动之间的关系。我们分析了10名参与者在24小时内每两小时执行四项认知任务（共12次试验）时的EEG和EDA数据。我们将EEG数据分解为δ、θ、α、β和γ频谱成分，将EDA分解为紧张性和相位性成分。结果表明，EDA与EEG的δ成分之间互信息值较高，主要出现在工作记忆任务中。此外，我们发现睡眠剥夺导致疲劳时EEG的θ成分增加，在需要抑制和注意力的任务中α成分增加，在工作记忆任务中δ成分增加。就大脑活动的位置而言，大多数任务在初始试验中额叶区域的互信息较高，由于睡眠剥夺效应，九个分析的EEG通道的互信息有降低并趋于一致的趋势。我们的结果证明了中枢和交感神经活动之间的相互作用，可用于减轻睡眠剥夺的后果。
