Dry EEG measurement of P3 to evaluate cognitive load during sitting, standing, and walking

Abstract Combining brain imaging with dual-task paradigms provides a quantitative, direct metric of cognitive load that is agnostic to the motor task. To better understand the impact of cognitive load during activities of daily living, we measured brain activity from a dry electroencephalography headset as participants attended to a stimulus paradigm eliciting event-related potentials during sitting, standing, and walking. The stimulus paradigm consisted of an auditory oddball task in which they had to report the number of oddball tones that were heard during each motor task. The P3 event-related potential, which is inversely proportional to cognitive load, was extracted from electroencephalographic signals in each condition. Results showed that P3 was significantly lower during walking compared to sitting ( p = .039), indicating that cognitive load was higher during walking compared to the other activities. No significant differences in P3 were found between sitting and standing. Head motion did not have a significant impact on the measurement of cognitive load. These results encourage the use of a dry electroencephalography system to further investigate cognitive load during dynamic activities in individuals with and without motor impairments.