%0 Journal Article
%T Study of the physiological and mental health effects caused by exposure to low
%A Ali Mohammad Abbasi
%A Leila Tapak
%A Majid Motamedzade
%A Mohsen Aliabadi
%A Rostam Golmohammadi
%J Building Acoustics
%@ 2059-8025
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1351010X18779518
%X The purpose of this study was to investigate the physiological and mental health effects caused by exposure to low-frequency noise in typical control rooms and office-like areas. The participants were 35 male students who were exposed to noise at levels of 55, 65, 70, and 75£¿dBA. The N-back test was used at three cognitive performance loads (low workload (n£¿=£¿1), medium workload (n£¿=£¿2), and high workload (n£¿=£¿3) to evaluate working memory simultaneously in an air conditioning chamber in four sessions with a constant level. The electroencephalography, electrocardiogram, and electrooculography were measured using Nexus 4 by Bio traces software (Mind Media Co.). For evaluation of mental fatigue, fatigue visual analog scale, and psycho-physiological indices were also used. The results showed that the losses of physiological and mental health were rapidly increased with exposure to noise levels of 65¨C75£¿dBA. The results showed that mental fatigue significantly affected heart rate, low- to high-frequency ratios, and electroencephalogram indices such as theta, alpha, as well as eye activities and working memory. The findings confirmed that the mental fatigue caused by low-frequency noise significantly impacted the employees¡¯ psycho-physiological and working memory responses. Implementation of the effective interventions to overcome employees¡¯ mental fatigue in typical control rooms and office-like areas can improve the health and acoustic comfort and, consequently, the cognitive performance
%K Mental fatigue
%K low-frequency noise
%K acoustic comfort
%K body physiological response
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1351010X18779518