Tonic and phasic EEG and behavioral changes induced by arousing feedback

This study investigates brain dynamics and behavioral changes in response to arousing auditory signals presented to individuals experiencing momentary cognitive lapses during a sustained-attention task. Electroencephalographic (EEG) and behavioral data were simultaneously collected during virtual-reality (VR) based driving experiments, in which subjects were instructed to maintain their cruising position and compensate for randomly induced lane deviations using the steering wheel. 30-channel EEG data were analyzed by independent component analysis and the short-time Fourier transform. Across subjects and sessions, intermittent performance during drowsiness was accompanied by characteristic spectral augmentation or suppression in the alpha- and theta-band spectra of a bilateral occipital component, corresponding to brief periods of normal (wakeful) and hypnagogic (sleeping) awareness and behavior. Arousing auditory feedback was delivered to the subjects in half of the non-responded lane-deviation events, which immediately agitated subject's responses to the events. The improved behavioral performance was accompanied by concurrent spectral suppression in the theta- and alpha-bands of the bilateral occipital component. The effects of auditory feedback on spectral changes lasted 30 s or longer. The results of this study demonstrate the amount of cognitive state information that can be extracted from noninvasively recorded EEG data and the feasibility of online assessment and rectification of brain networks exhibiting characteristic dynamic patterns in response to momentary cognitive challenges.