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International Journal of Environmental... Jun 2021Most people recover within months after a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) or concussion, but some will suffer from long-term fatigue with a reduced quality of life and... (Review)
Review
Most people recover within months after a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) or concussion, but some will suffer from long-term fatigue with a reduced quality of life and the inability to maintain their employment status or education. For many people, mental fatigue is one of the most distressing and long-lasting symptoms following an mTBI. No efficient treatment options can be offered. The best method for measuring fatigue today is with fatigue self-assessment scales, there being no objective clinical tests available for mental fatigue. The aim here is to provide a narrative review and identify fatigue in relation to cognitive tests and brain imaging methods. Suggestions for future research are presented.
Topics: Brain Concussion; Humans; Mental Fatigue; Neuroimaging; Neuropsychological Tests; Quality of Life
PubMed: 34199339
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18115955 -
Ear and Hearing 2016Fatigue is common in individuals with a variety of chronic health conditions and can have significant negative effects on quality of life. Although limited in scope,... (Review)
Review
Fatigue is common in individuals with a variety of chronic health conditions and can have significant negative effects on quality of life. Although limited in scope, recent work suggests persons with hearing loss may be at increased risk for fatigue, in part due to effortful listening that is exacerbated by their hearing impairment. However, the mechanisms responsible for hearing loss-related fatigue, and the efficacy of audiologic interventions for reducing fatigue, remain unclear. To improve our understanding of hearing loss-related fatigue, as a field it is important to develop a common conceptual understanding of this construct. In this article, the broader fatigue literature is reviewed to identify and describe core constructs, consequences, and methods for assessing fatigue and related constructs. Finally, the current knowledge linking hearing loss and fatigue is described and may be summarized as follows: Hearing impairment may increase the risk of subjective fatigue and vigor deficits; adults with hearing loss require more time to recover from fatigue after work and have more work absences; sustained, effortful, listening can be fatiguing; optimal methods for eliciting and measuring fatigue in persons with hearing loss remain unclear and may vary with listening condition; and amplification may minimize decrements in cognitive processing speed during sustained effortful listening. Future research is needed to develop reliable measurement methods to quantify hearing loss-related fatigue, explore factors responsible for modulating fatigue in people with hearing loss, and identify and evaluate potential interventions for reducing hearing loss-related fatigue.
Topics: Classification; Cognition; Fatigue; Hearing Loss; Humans; Mental Fatigue; Quality of Life
PubMed: 27355763
DOI: 10.1097/AUD.0000000000000289 -
Revista Medica de Chile Aug 2020
Topics: Compassion Fatigue; Empathy; Health Personnel; Humans; Mental Health; Telemedicine
PubMed: 33399790
DOI: 10.4067/S0034-98872020000801219 -
International Journal of Environmental... Nov 2022Mental fatigue (MF) has been defined as a psychobiological state commonly caused by prolonged periods of demanding cognitive activity. However, the differences between...
AIM
Mental fatigue (MF) has been defined as a psychobiological state commonly caused by prolonged periods of demanding cognitive activity. However, the differences between women and men in their reaction times (RTs) to visual stimuli due to mental fatigue remain largely unknown. We compare the differences in RT and heart rate after an acute intervention of mental fatigue between male and female athletes.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
For this aim, 64 participants (age 31.7 ± 6.2 y) performed a routine of 15 min of the Stroop test (PsyTool), with 600 tasks and five different colors. Their heart rate (HR) was registered before, during, and one, three, and five minutes after the Stroop test. Meanwhile, the RT was evaluated before and after the Stroop test. A general linear mixed model (GLMM) and a Bonferroni post hoc test were used to compare the HR between the conditions and an ANOVA two-way analysis was used to compare the values pre-/post-Stroop test. (α = 0.05).
RESULTS
The GLMM for HR showed an effect on the time ( < 0.001) and the time × group interaction ( = 0.004). The RT was significantly increased pre- to post-Stroop test ( < 0.05); however, there was no difference between the pre- and post-HR measurements ( = 1.000) and the measurements one ( = 0.559), three ( = 1.000) and five ( = 1.000) min after the Stroop test.
CONCLUSION
The present findings suggest that the parasympathetic branch of the autonomous nervous system which functions as a relaxation system tends to be activated under increasing mental fatigue, with a decreased performance (RT) similarly in men and women. Therefore, athletes could use MF induced during training to improve the time delay related to motor tasks.
Topics: Female; Humans; Male; Adult; Reaction Time; Mental Fatigue; Stroop Test; Athletes; Heart Rate
PubMed: 36361239
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph192114360 -
International Journal of Environmental... Jan 2023Mental fatigue is a common phenomenon in our daily lives. Long-term fatigue can lead to a decline in a person's operational functions and seriously affect work...
Mental fatigue is a common phenomenon in our daily lives. Long-term fatigue can lead to a decline in a person's operational functions and seriously affect work efficiency. In this paper, a method that recognizes the degree of mental fatigue based on relative band power and fuzzy entropy of Electroencephalogram (EEG) is proposed. The N-back experiment was used to induce mental fatigue in subjects, and the corresponding EEG signals were recorded during the experiment. A preprocessing method based on complementary ensemble empirical modal decomposition (CEEMD) and independent component analysis (ICA) was designed to remove noise from the raw EEG signal. The relative band power feature, which has been used extensively in fatigue recognition studies, was extracted from the EEG signals. Meanwhile, fuzzy entropy, a feature commonly used in attention recognition, was also extracted for fatigue recognition, based on previous findings that an increase in fatigue is accompanied by a decrease in attention. The two features were fed into an extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) classifier to distinguish three different degrees of fatigue, which resulted in an average accuracy of 92.39% based on data from eight subjects. The promising results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method in mental fatigue degree identification.
Topics: Humans; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Entropy; Recognition, Psychology; Electroencephalography; Mental Fatigue
PubMed: 36674202
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph20021447 -
American Journal of Physiology.... Dec 2020Many occupations and sports require high levels of manual dexterity under thermal stress and mental fatigue. Yet, multistressor studies remain scarce. We quantified the... (Comparative Study)
Comparative Study
Many occupations and sports require high levels of manual dexterity under thermal stress and mental fatigue. Yet, multistressor studies remain scarce. We quantified the interactive effects of thermal stress and mental fatigue on manual dexterity. Seven males (21.1 ± 1.3 yr) underwent six separate 60-min trials characterized by a combination of three air temperatures (hot, 37°C; neutral, 21°C; cold, 7°C) and two mental fatigue states (MF, mental fatigue induced by a 35-min cognitive battery; no-MF, no mental fatigue). Participants performed complex (O'Connor test) and simple (hand-tool test) manual tasks pre- and posttrial to determine stressor-induced performance changes. We monitored participants' rectal temperature and hand skin temperature (T) continuously and assessed the reaction time (hand-click test) and subjective mental fatigue (5-point scale). Thermal stress ( < 0.0001), but not mental fatigue ( = 0.290), modulated T (heat, +3.3°C [95% CI: +0.2, +6.5]; cold, -7.5°C [-10.7, -4.4]). Mental fatigue ( = 0.021), but not thermal stress ( = 0.646), slowed the reaction time (∼10%) and increased subjective fatigue. Thermal stress and mental fatigue had an interactive effect on the complex manual task ( = 0.040), with cold-no-MF decreasing the performance by -22% [-39, -5], whereas neutral-MF, cold-MF, and heat-MF by -36% [-53, -19], -34% [-52, -17], and -36% [-53, -19], respectively. Only mental fatigue decreased the performance in the simple manual task (-30% [-43, -16] across all thermal conditions; = 0.002). Cold stress-induced impairments in complex manipulation increase with mental fatigue; yet combined stressors' effects are no greater than those of mental fatigue alone, which also impairs simple manipulation. Mental fatigue poses a greater challenge to manual dexterity than thermal stress.
Topics: Cold Temperature; Cold-Shock Response; Heat-Shock Response; Hot Temperature; Humans; Male; Mental Fatigue; Motor Skills; Reaction Time; Single-Blind Method; Task Performance and Analysis; Time Factors; Young Adult
PubMed: 33074012
DOI: 10.1152/ajpregu.00226.2020 -
Acta Psychologica Oct 2022The mechanisms underlying increased dual-task costs in the comparison of modality compatible stimulus-response mappings (e.g., visual-manual, auditory-vocal) and...
The mechanisms underlying increased dual-task costs in the comparison of modality compatible stimulus-response mappings (e.g., visual-manual, auditory-vocal) and modality incompatible mappings (e.g., visual-vocal, auditory-manual) remain elusive. To investigate whether additional control mechanisms are at work in simultaneously processing two modality incompatible mappings, we applied a transfer logic between both types of dual-task mappings in the context of a mental fatigue induction. We expected an increase in dual-task costs for both modality mappings after a fatigue induction with modality compatible tasks. In contrast, we expected an additional, selective increase in modality incompatible dual-task costs after a fatigue induction with modality incompatible tasks. We tested a group of 45young individuals (19-30 years) in an online pre-post design, in which participants were assigned to one of three groups. The two fatigue groups completed a 90-min time-on-task intervention with a dual task comprising either compatible or incompatible modality mappings. The third group paused for 90 min as a passive control group. Pre and post-session contained single and dual tasks in both modality mappings for all participants. In addition to behavioral performance measurements, seven subjective items (effort, focus, subjective fatigue, motivation, frustration, mental and physical capacity) were analyzed. Mean dual-task performance during and after the intervention indicated a practice effect instead of the presumed fatigue effect for all three groups. The modality incompatible intervention group showed a selective performance improvement for the modality incompatible mapping but no transfer to the modality compatible dual task. In contrast, the compatible intervention group showed moderately improved performance in both modality mappings. Still, participants reported increased subjective fatigue and reduced motivation after the fatigue intervention. This dynamic interplay of training and fatigue effects suggests that high control demands were involved in the prolonged performance of a modality incompatible dual task, which are separable from modality compatible dual-task demands.
Topics: Humans; Reaction Time; Psychomotor Performance; Photic Stimulation; Acoustic Stimulation; Mental Fatigue
PubMed: 36242924
DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103766 -
Psychophysiology Dec 2022Although mentally fatiguing cognitive tasks can impair subsequent physical endurance, the importance of cognitive task duration and the role of response inhibition... (Randomized Controlled Trial)
Randomized Controlled Trial
Although mentally fatiguing cognitive tasks can impair subsequent physical endurance, the importance of cognitive task duration and the role of response inhibition remain unclear. This study compared the effects of a serial incongruent Stroop color-classification task (i.e., with response inhibition) and N-back memory updating task (i.e., without response inhibition) on mental fatigue and subsequent rhythmic handgrip exercise. Participants (N = 90) were randomly assigned to one of three cognitive task groups (Stroop, 2-back, control) and completed four 10-min blocks of one cognitive task followed by a 5-min physical endurance task (self-paced rhythmic handgrip exercise). Heart rate, heart rate variability, electromyographic forearm activity, and force were recorded throughout along with self-reported measures of fatigue, exertion, and motivation. From the start, the Stroop and 2-back tasks elicited higher heart rate and lower heart rate variability as well as greater fatigue, effort, and interest/enjoyment than the control task. From the second block onwards, the Stroop and 2-back groups produced less force than the control group. There were no group differences in forearm muscle activity. In sum, mental fatigue was induced after performing a cognitive task for 10 mins, whereas muscular endurance was impaired after performing a cognitive task for 20 mins. That these effects were observed for both types of cognitive task indicates that response inhibition is not a necessary condition. The cognitive task duration required to induce mental fatigue and impair rhythmic handgrip endurance performance lay between the durations reported previously for isometric (a few minutes) and whole-body (half an hour) endurance exercise.
Topics: Humans; Physical Endurance; Hand Strength; Mental Fatigue; Stroop Test; Cognition; Physical Exertion
PubMed: 35726493
DOI: 10.1111/psyp.14126 -
Lakartidningen Mar 2022Mental fatigue or brain fatigue is a pathological and disabling symptom with diminished mental energy. It can be a long-lasting consequence after trauma or disease...
Mental fatigue or brain fatigue is a pathological and disabling symptom with diminished mental energy. It can be a long-lasting consequence after trauma or disease affecting the brain. The person can do most things in the moment and can be perceived as completely healthy, but the mental energy is insufficient over time and affects the ability to work and participate in social activities. After a conversation, for example, the person can be completely drained of energy and the recovery time is disproportionally long. Here we describe the phenomenon of mental fatigue, provide an explanatory model for how the condition can arise, point out diagnostic methods and possible treatments, which are currently in the research stage but may be implemented in healthcare within the foreseeable future.
Topics: Humans; Mental Fatigue
PubMed: 35353369
DOI: No ID Found -
Journal of Research in Health Sciences Dec 2023Evidence suggests that train drivers experience a high level of fatigue and mental workload. The present study aimed to assess overall, physical, and mental fatigue...
BACKGROUND
Evidence suggests that train drivers experience a high level of fatigue and mental workload. The present study aimed to assess overall, physical, and mental fatigue levels and their correlations with the mental workload in the metro train operation. A cross-sectional study.
METHODS
This study was conducted on all 1194 train drivers in the Tehran Metro. The train drivers completed the Samn-Perelli Fatigue Scale and the Fatigue Assessment Scales at the beginning and end of the shift. In addition, they completed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index in the middle and at the end of the shift. Correlation and regression analyses were performed on the data to test the study hypothesis.
RESULTS
Overall, physical, and mental fatigue levels increased significantly at the end of the shift compared to the onset of the shift (<0.001). The mental workload and related dimensions were significantly increased at the end of the shift compared to the middle of the shift (<0.001). Mental demand was the most important workload problem among the train drivers. The highest correlation was found between overall workload and time pressure (R=0.68, <0.001).
CONCLUSION
The mental workload had a significant correlation with work fatigue in the train drivers. Control measures should be focused on the mental workload and related dimensions, especially mental demand and time pressure.
Topics: United States; Humans; Cross-Sectional Studies; Iran; Workload; Mental Fatigue
PubMed: 38315915
DOI: 10.34172/jrhs.2023.135