For Tired Computer Users: A Headband To Tell You When To Quit

A Tufts University team wants to expand on technology that uses near-infrared spectroscopy sensors to measure the brain's emotional state.

By W. David Gardner InformationWeek October 12, 2007 06:00 AM

A high tech headband that monitors blood oxygenation levels in the brain may tell people working at PCs and terminals when they are becoming overly fatigued, distracted, or just plain stressed out.

The concept was described at this week's ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology by a Tufts University team that has been awarded a $445,000 grant by the National Science Foundation. The technology involves the use of a MRI-like headband to gain real time insight into the brain's emotional state.

The research could produce valuable insight into a range of situations, but particularly for people peering into video screens in stressful situations like air traffic controllers, emergency workers and military personnel in combat situations. A long-term goal of the research would be to improve user interfaces for normal computer users.

Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), the team said the technology is "safe, portable, non-invasive and can be implemented wirelessly."

The team has been directed by computer science professor Robert Jacob and biomedical engineering professor Sergio Fantini. They have noted that while there have been some successful evaluations of workload, emotion and fatigue of computer users, it has traditionally been difficult to measure mental workload, frustration and distraction.
"One moment a user may be bored, and the next moment, the same user may be overwhelmed," stated professor Jacob. "Measuring mental workload, frustration and distraction is typically limited to qualitatively observing computer users or to administering surveys after completion of a task, potentially missing valuable insight into the users' changing experiences."
Infrared sensors on the headband are fitted with laser diodes that send near-infrared light into the forehead, enabling oxygenation to be tracked. Stress levels from bored to overwhelmed can be measured. In initial experiments using the fNIRS technology, the Tufts researchers were able to obtain relatively accurate depictions of subjects' workload. Now they want to take the technology further.

In initial experiments, subjects were asked to carry out various tasks online before they were asked to rate the difficulty of the tasks. The subjects' ratings coincided 83% of the time with the date developed by the fNIRS technology.

"We don't know how specific we can be about identifying users' different emotional states," said Sergio Fantini, a biomedical engineering professor at Tufts. "However, the particular area of the brain where the blood-flow change occurs should provide indications of the brain's metabolic changes and by extension workload, which could be a proxy for emotions like frustration."