Influences Of Computer Work Under Time Pressure On The EEG Characteristics

Computers nowadays are widely used in all fields. The intensive involvement of computers has greatly improved the efficiency of the work, but long-time computer-based work and the work under time pressure(TP) can cause many skeleton, muscle or cardiovascular diseases. The influence of time pressure on autonomic nervous system and cognitive behavior in a variety of computer-based tasks has been studied for years. Both animal and human studies so far have suggested that cardiovascular function alteration is modulated by cortical activities; therefore, TP could be potentially impact the cerebral activity, which has not been investigated yet. In this thesis, we designed two experiments with different cues of time pressure, and wanted to find which cue is more effective and less stressful.The protocols of the computer-mouse work task were modified from the previous studies by our group. The whole digit input task was simplified into resting, baseline and time pressure sessions, and both ECG signals and EEG signals were recorded simultaneously in these sessions. We found that the heart rate increased significantly under time pressure. EEG analysis result showed that multichannel phase synchronization method was more effective than the traditional power spectral method in detecting the dynamical change of the brain functions during mental process. Also, in this study, we found that TP could cause the decrease of inter-hemispheric synchronization, which was more prominent under visual and auditory TP tasks.In this thesis, we used phase synchronization method to study the influence of computer work under time pressure on the EEG characteristic and found that the cortical phase synchronization of EEG was sensitive to mental state. Our results provide foundation for the future research and practical application.