Mental and physical effort affect vigilance differently
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 44 healthy students (8 men and 36 women; mean age 22 years). They signed an informed consent and received 20 or fulfilled a course requirement.
Recording
Electrodes were placed at Fz, Cz, and Pz (Jasper, 1958). EEG was registered with Ag–Cl electrodes in an elastic cap. The ground electrode was placed on the forehead and the left mastoid served as reference. Electro-ocular activity was recorded next to and above the right eye. Electrode impedance was less than 5 kΩ. Signals were
Results
Data were analyzed with repeated measures ANOVAs with Bonferroni's confidence interval adjustments. EEG data were analyzed per electrode site with 3 × 3 × 2 (Group × Time × Eyes situation: open or closed) ANOVAs. In case of an occasional missing value for the EEG data the missing value was replaced by its group mean (there was less than 1 missing data point per participant per electrode site over the entire experiment). Performance and HR data of each measurement were split in two (part 1 and part 2)
Discussion
Any mental task that requires a response entails a physical component. Moreover, it is known that physical exercise concerns a central element as well (Gandevia, 2001, Nielsen and Nybo, 2003). However, we argue that a sustained mental task condition in which relatively little muscular movement is needed, will primarily require a vast amount of central energy expenditure. Conversely, a physical effort task will lead to far more peripheral energy costs if it predominantly requires body movements
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Anneke Mol and Peter Staal for their assistance during the experiment. We are grateful for the general technical guidance of Willy van Schaijk and Jos Wittebrood. We thank Hubert Voogd for constructing software for the mental effort task and Philip van den Broek for support with respect to EEG analyses.
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