EEG-fNIRS Fusion Approach for the Measurement of Workplace Stress Related to Design and Noise

This study aims to evaluate the effect of workstation types, such as ergonomic versus non-ergonomic and quiet versus noisy, on neural-vascular functions and networks of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) underlying the cognitive activity involved during mental stress. Workstation design and noise have been reported to affect the physical and mental health of employees. However, while the functional effects of workstation types have been documented, there is little research on their influence on brain executive functions. The electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared
spectroscopy (fNIRS) were used to simultaneously measure electrical activity and hemoglobin concentration changes in the PFC. The multimodal signals were collected from 23 healthy adults who completed the Montreal imaging stress task in ergonomic and non-ergonomic workstations; and 25 adults in quiet and noisy workplaces. A supervised machine learning method with multimodal coupling based on temporally embedded canonical correlation analysis (mCtCCA) was utilized to obtain the association between neural activity and local changes in hemoglobin concentrations to enhance
localization and accuracy and to generate neurovascular coupling networks.