Study of circadian mental fatigue by fMRI

Abstract

In recent years, there are increasing interests in fatigue-tracking technologies to prevent fatigue-related accidents. Most previous findings on the fatigue have found varying results, which could be due to methodological limitation. However, the neural firing state across the process of the fatigue induced by the circadian rhythm is little. We proposed four hypotheses for the circadian fatigue progress by fMRI to indicate the neural firing states when the circadian fatigue is progressing. Results show that the circadian mental fatigue caused the over all brain activity decreased and the brain protects itself against and compensates for the effects of circadian fatigue by manipulating the activation status of the areas in PFC, AFC, PL, ACC and TH. This circadian fatigue study by fMRI based on the auditory task shows neural basis for the fatigue counterwork.