The Engineering Alertness project is designed to build on state-of-the-art laboratory findings to develop a mobile device for use in the home to help reduce accidents associated with loss of alertness and subsequent lapses of attention.  In addition, the device can also be used to monitor changes from the optimal diurnally-varying alert state for the purpose of early detection of clinically relevant problems. 

During a range of everyday goal-directed tasks, such as the Sudoku puzzle mentioned in the Lifemapping project, it is possible to monitor simple electrophysiological fluctuations known to be related to the arousal/alertness system: brain rhythms can be decomposed into different frequency bands – for example, beta (> 14 cycles-per-second), theta (3-5 cycles-per-second) and alpha (circa 10 cycles-per-second).  The prevalence or ‘power’ of each band can be measured; these are known as ‘oscillatory brain states’. These states have considerable behavioural, physiological and neurochemical relevance: for instance, during periods when individuals are alert and receptive the alpha rhythm – a key attention-sensitive EEG signal – changes in power. 

Furthermore, changes in the ratio of theta-to-beta power and moment-to-moment changes in electrodermal activity index our background levels of arousal. Engineering alertness will attempt to utilise these signals for monitoring and improving alertness, arousal and concentration.  The aforementioned signals will be investigated as viable biomarkers of alertness/arousal with unobtrusive devices that ultimately can be used in the home. These recordings will allow automatic reports of any changes in these biomarkers and they can also be utilised as an index of modifying arousal using a self-alerting training protocol based on changes in these biomarkers.