Towards a versatile mental workload modeling using neurometric indices

Abstract

Researchers have been working to magnify mental workload (MWL) modeling for a long time. An important aspect of its modeling is feature selection as it interprets bulky and high-dimensional EEG data and enhances the accuracy of the classification model. In this study, a feature selection technique is proposed to obtain an optimized feature set with multiple domain features that can contribute to classifying the MWL at three distinct levels. The brain signals from thirteen healthy subjects were examined while they attended an intrinsic MWL of spotting differences in a set of similar pictures. The Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE) technique selects the robust features from the feature matrix by eliminating all the least contributing features. Along with the Support Vector Machine (SVM), the overall classification accuracy with the proposed RFE reached 0.913 from 0.791 surpassing the other techniques mentioned. The results of the study also significantly display the variation in the mean values of the selected features at the three workload levels (p<0.05). This model can become the principle for defining the workload level quantification applicable to diverse fields like neuroergonomics study, intelligent assistive devices (ADs) development, blue-chip technology exploration, cognitive evaluation of students, power plant operators, traffic operators, etc.