npj Digital Medicine (Mar 2021)
Digital biomarker of mental fatigue
Abstract
Abstract Mental fatigue is an important aspect of alertness and wellbeing. Existing fatigue tests are subjective and/or time-consuming. Here, we show that smartphone-based gaze is significantly impaired with mental fatigue, and tracks the onset and progression of fatigue. A simple model predicts mental fatigue reliably using just a few minutes of gaze data. These results suggest that smartphone-based gaze could provide a scalable, digital biomarker of mental fatigue.