Eeg-based analysis of cognitive load under 2D/3D visual stimuli

With the increasing prevalence of 3D videos, investigating the differences in cognitive impact between 2D and 3D videos has become an important issue. In this paper, we utilized electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate differences in cognitive load when subjects viewed 2D and 3D videos, which were classified into four types according to the contents. Additionally, we employed the cognitive load index (CLI) and event-related synchronization/desynchronization (ERS/ERD) to evaluate the variations of EEG patterns. Subjects were exposed to both 2D and 3D video stimuli, and the corresponding EEG data were recorded. Then, we analyzed the responses of various oscillations under different stimuli, and CLI and ERS/ERD were utilized to evaluate the brain activity of different subjects. According to our experiments and analysis, videos that involve simple observational tasks consistently induced a higher cognitive load in subjects when they were viewing 3D videos. However, for videos that involve calculation tasks, the differences in cognitive load induced by 2D and 3D videos were not obvious. Thus, we concluded that 3D videos could generally induce a higher cognitive load; however, the extent of the differences also depended on the content of the video stimuli and the viewing purpose.