NCT05576935

The Individual Response of Healthy Individuals to Mental Fatigue

The Individual Response of Healthy Individuals to Mental Fatigue: a Randomized Crossover Trial Investigating the Influence of Internal Factors in the Effects of Mental Fatigue on Human Performance

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 142 (actual)
• Sponsor: Vrije Universiteit Brussel · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 50 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The objective of the present study is to confirm and map out the presence of interindividual differences in the effect of mental fatigue on both physical and cognitive performance, and to see if these differences are related to individual factors of the participants.

Detailed description

Every participant will visit the lab a total of three times within a period of two weeks. In the first visit, they will undergo both a detailed screening as well as perform all intervention/control trial measures to familiarize themselves with the utilised equipment. This detailed screening entails, among other things, a maximal incremental exercise test, a cognitive test battery and multiple subjective questionnaires. The experimental and control trial are almost identical, with the only difference being the task performed in the middel of the trial. At the beginning of the trial the EEG will be fitted to the head of the participant and baseline measures will be taken. Afterwards, participants will perform a go nogo task to assess baseline cognitive performance. Then the intervention (i.e. Stroop task) or control (i.e. documentary) task will be performed. The goal of the Stroop task is to elicit mental fatigue, while the documentary provides a meaningful comparison. Afterwards, cognitive performance will again be assessed using the go no go task, followed by a physical performance task in the form of a time trial. The different internal factors assessed during the screening stage will be correlated to the difference in cognitive and physical performance between the intervention and control trial.

Conditions

• Mental Fatigue

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Stroop task	The task is partitioned in 4 blocks of 360 stimuli and each word will be presented on screen in 34 point font for 1000 ms with an inter-stimulus interval based on their performance on the Stroop max test. This max test will be performed during the familiarization trial, and is divided in blocks of 96 stimuli. After each block, the accuracy (ACC) will be calculated. When ACC \> 85%, the difficulty of the Stroop task will be increased by decreasing the stimulus presentation time (SPT). If ACC \< 85%, this block will be considered as an 'error' and the subject must redo the block without changing the SPT. The first block will have a SPT of 1500 ms. When the required ACC is achieved, the SPT will decrease in the following order: 1100, 900, 800,… to determine the individualized cognitive load. When the subject makes 3 errors in a row, or 5 errors during the whole trial, the trial will end. The SPT of the last block will be considered as the maximum capacity of that individual.
BEHAVIORAL	Documentary	In order to avoid under- and over-arousal, participants will have the opportunity to choose between several documentaries. The participants will also receive a list of the available documentaries (based on selections from Netflix and Disney+) after the familiarization trial so that the trial can go as smoothly as possible.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-07-01
• Primary completion: 2024-08-23
• Completion: 2024-08-23
• First posted: 2022-10-13
• Last updated: 2024-08-28

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Belgium