Title: Fractal analysis of EEG signals for studying the effect of cognitive stress on brain

Authors: Arnab Rakshit; Anwesha Banerjee; Ankita Mazumder; Poulami Ghosh; Anilesh Dey; D.N. Tibarewala

Addresses: School of Bioscience & Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India ' School of Bioscience & Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India ' School of Bioscience & Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India ' School of Bioscience & Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India ' School of Bioscience & Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India ' School of Bioscience & Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Abstract: This work aims to study the development of stress in different section of brain under various mental stress conditions, while the brain performs variety of cognitive tasks. The cognitive tasks are designed so as to cover a wide range of brain activities, which includes puzzle solving, decision making, mathematical calculation, memorisation and recollection, correlation and matching. The purpose is to see whether different level of stresses could be developed under varied conditions. In this article we use Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA) to observe the different changes in different lobes of the brain. It is found that there is an effect on frontal and parietal lobes during the cognitive task. In order to confirm the results of MFDFA analysis, we also obtain topological scalp map. The features of topological scalp map are found to support the results of MFDFA.

Keywords: cognitive task; psychological tests; memory recollection; EEG; stochasticity; surrogate data test; average mutual information; Q-Q plot; Hurst exponent; MFDFA; multi-fractal detrended fluctuation analysis; multifractal spectrum; singularity exponent; mass exponent; kurtosis; brain activation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2017.087707

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2017 Vol.25 No.2/3/4, pp.336 - 369

Received: 13 Oct 2015
Accepted: 08 Feb 2016
Published online: 31 Oct 2017 *

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