The need for adequate EEG modeling and personalization in daily life cognitive engagement monitoring

Monitoring cognitive engagement during daily activities can offer new insights in understanding our brain at work. It requires the usage of a convenient electroencephalograph (EEG) system and an adequate model that can characterize cognitive states and state changes reflected in the electrical activity of the brain. This paper studies EEG during cognitive relaxation and cognitive engagement in eyes open and eyes closed conditions. It explores the effects cognitive states have on alpha brain activity captured by different alpha activity models. The analysis revealed that models that characterize not only the spectral power but also the alpha peak frequency and the width and the power of the alpha peak provide better insights into the cognitive engagement of a person. Furthermore, personal differences are observed in the alpha peak parameters with respect to different cognitive states. We argue that using alpha peak modeling, instead of traditionally used power in the flxed alpha frequency band is required for proper characterization of human brain activity in cognitive studies.