Effects of ASMR on mental fatigue recovery revealed by EEG power and brain network analysis

Yueguang Si^1,2Xuchen Qi^3*Kuijun Wu⁴Lingyun Gao^5,6Sujie Wang⁴Mengru Xu⁴Yu SUN^2,7,8*

• ¹Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
• ²Shaoxing People's Hospital, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, China
• ³Department of Neurology, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, School of Medicine, Graduate School, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
• ⁴Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
• ⁵the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Zhengzhou University,, Zhengzhou, China
• ⁶Henan Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Brain-Computer Interface Technology, School of Electrical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
• ⁷he State Key Laboratory for Brain-Computer Intelligence, and the Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education of China, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
• ⁸College of Mathematical Medicine, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, China

Mental fatigue, resulting from prolonged cognitive tasks or sleep deprivation, significantly impacts safety and performance, particularly in high-risk environments. However, effective intervention methods are limited, highlighting the urgent need for new approaches to alleviate mental fatigue. This study explores the effectiveness of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) as a novel intervention for alleviating mental fatigue. A withinsubject design was employed in this work, where 28 healthy young subjects (M/F = 17/11, age = 21.82±0.37 years) were requested to perform a continuous 30 minutes sustained attention task (named No-Break session) and a 30 minutes task with a 4 minute mid-task ASMR break (named ASMR-Break session) at a counterbalanced order. The immediate effect and general effect of ASMR were quantitatively assessed on behavioral performance and EEG characteristics. Behaviorally, only significant immediate effect was revealed as showing in reduced reaction time. Further interrogation of brain dynamics showed complex patterns of spatio-spectrum alterations and an interaction in smallworld metric in theta band. Specifically, the ASMR intervention prevented an increase in small-worldness, and the correlation between changes in small-worldness and reaction times diminished after the intervention. In sum, this study extends our understanding about the underlying neural mechanisms of ASMR and demonstrates its potential efficacy for managing mental fatigue, which may lead to a new approach to improve mental health and performance in demanding environments.