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A feasibility study on using fNIRS brain signals to recognize personal thermal sensation and thermal comfort conditions

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology (2023)Cite this article

Abstract

Background

Many studies have shown some relationships between thermal perception (including thermal sensation and thermal comfort) and human physiological parameters, such as brain signals. However, further research is still needed on how these parameters can help recognize the state of a human’s personal thermal perception.

Objective

This study aims to investigate the potential of using fNIRS brain signals to evaluate and predict personal thermal perception and cognitive performance in a steady-state temperature.

Methods

The present study investigated changes in the fNIRS signal during ambient temperature manipulation. Thirty healthy young individuals were selected as the subjects, and they were exposed to two steady temperatures of 28.8 and 19 °C. After acclimatizing to either temperature, the oxy/deoxy-hemoglobin changes of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) were measured in both rest and cognitive task states using 16-channel fNIRS.

Results

Results showed that exposure to different temperatures was significantly associated with the brain signals recorded during the task state. Many significant correlations were discovered between fNIRS signals and thermal perception indices. Furthermore, subjects’ performance changes led to changes in the fNIRS signals. Logistic regression showed that fNIRS can determine whether a person is thermally comfortable or uncomfortable.

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Fig. 1: The test room.
Fig. 2: Experimental procedure and fNIRS setup.
Fig. 3: Changes in the average performance of subjects in Stroop task versus thermal sensation/ thermal comfort.
Fig. 4: Temperature effect on fNIRS.
Fig. 5: Thermal perception effect on fNIRS.
Fig. 6: Performance effect on fNIRS.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Iranian National Brain Mapping Laboratory (NBML) for providing data acquisition service for the present work. We also thank Mohamad Abdolmaleki (Technical University of Denmark - DTU) and Vesal Moaiyed (Uniklinik RWTH, Aachen), for their support and assistance.

Funding

This study was conducted with financial support provided by Tarbiat Modares University and partially funded by LABSNET of Iran.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

    P. M. Sharooni & M. Maerefat

  2. Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran

    S. A. Zolfaghari

  3. Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Optics at Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Charlestown, MA, USA

    M. Dadgostar

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  1. P. M. Sharooni
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Contributions

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: Designing the experiment: PS, MM, AZ, and MD; Conceptualization: PS, MM, AZ, and MD; conducting the experiment: PS; analysis and interpretation of results: PS, MM, and MD; writing and editing manuscript text: PS, MM, AZ, and MD; Funding acquisition: MM.

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Correspondence to M. Maerefat.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

The project was reviewed and approved by the research ethics committee of Tarbiat Modares University (Approval ID: IR.MODARES.REC.1399.133).

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M. Sharooni, P., Maerefat, M., Zolfaghari, S.A. et al. A feasibility study on using fNIRS brain signals to recognize personal thermal sensation and thermal comfort conditions. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-023-00609-y

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