How do Emotional Stimuli Influence the Learner's Brain Activity? - Tracking the Brainwave Frequecy Bands Amplitudes

In this paper we discuss how learner’s electrical brain activity can be influenced by emotional stimuli. We conducted an experimentation in which we exposed a group of 17 learners to a series of pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) while their electrical brain activity was recorded. We got 33.106 recordings. In an exploratory study we examined the influence of 24 picture categories from the IAPS on the amplitude variations of the 4 brainwaves frequency bands: δ, φ, α and β. We used machine learning techniques to track the amplitudes in order to predict the dominant frequency band which inform about the learner mental and emotional states. Correlation and regression analyses show a significant impact of the emotional stimuli on the amplitudes of the brainwave frequency bands. Standard classification techniques were used to assess the reliability of the automatic prediction of the dominant frequency band. The reached accuracy was 90%. We discuss the prospects of extending our actual Brainwave-Sensing Multi Agent System to be integrated to an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) in the future.