Rahmaniyah Dwi Astuti

A pervasive environmental stressor is one that damages mental and physical health as well as cognitive abilities by producing noise at a specific frequency and level. Current noise pollution levels pose a significant threat to public health, potentially leading to impaired cognitive function, increased stress, and other negative health consequences. This study aims to investigate the relationship between noise exposure and human cognitive abilities using a comprehensive analysis of power spectrum density (PSD) derived from EEG signals. Twenty-four participants completed the experiment to identify the effect of exposure to different noise levels (55 dB, 65 dB, 70 dB, 75 dB, 80 dB, and 85 dB) and two types of continuous and intermittent noise. The Stroop Color–Word Test and the Emotive Epoch EEG are cognitive task instruments used during experiments. Behavioral performance (accuracy and response time) and power spectrum electroencephalographic density were collected and analyzed. The methodology involved collecting EEG data from participants exposed to controlled noise stimuli and a subsequent PSD analysis to uncover frequency-specific patterns associated with cognitive processes. Attention levels were measured by examining beta wave activity, while stress responses were evaluated through an alpha wave analysis. Additionally, mental workload was assessed by considering the overall distribution of PSD through the theta-to-alpha ratio. The results revealed a significant relationship between the exposure to noise types and levels and human cognitive ability. The analysis of the power spectrum density on the cognitive aspects of attention and stress yielded results indicating that participants were in the best attention condition and in a relaxed or unstressed state when exposed to noise levels of 65 dB in both continuous and intermittent noise types. For the mental workload aspect, participants exposed to both continuous and intermittent noise types at a noise level of 70 dB began to indicate the presence of mental workload. These findings supported the importance of considering the impact of environmental noise on human cognitive well-being and demonstrated the potential of EEG monitoring as an objective tool for assessing the impact of noise on cognitive performance.

Human activities that require cognitive performance is doing cognitive computer-based tasks. One of the important cognitive performances in people when doing some active thinking tasks is attention. This study focuses on measuring cognitive performance through cognitive tasks in the form of a Stroop Color Word Test with a neurophysiological approach, namely EEG, related to the effects of physical environment factors: room temperature. The temperature variations that will be studied refer to the concepts of slightly warm, neutral, and slightly cool with 18 °C representing slightly cool, 24 °C representing neutral, and 30 °C representing slightly warm. This study used an experimental design method and was conducted on 12 subjects. This study showed that room temperature treatment had a significant effect on TRT (sig. 0.00), but not on accuracy which it refers to cognitive performance to do the task correctly. To explain of the beta EEG signal, it was found that the highest power spectrum value occurred when the respondent was subjected to room temperature treatment of 24 °C. While in the ERP P3 measurement, it was found that the amplitude (µV) of P3 was best at 24 °C.