Application of physiological measurements for thermal comfort assessment

A wearable device to acquire electroencephalographic (EEG) signals was used to investigate changes in the EEG frequency domain at different indoor temperatures. Twenty-three participants were enrolled and the EEG signals were recorded during a rest condition with open eyes (i.e. a condition without any specific task) using three different ambient temperatures cold (16°C), neutral (24°C), and warm (31 °C) in a climate chamber. Beta and gamma bands showed significant differences across the three different temperatures. In particular, pairwise comparisons revealed differences in TP9 and TP10 electrodes between cold and neutral conditions for beta and gamma bands and between the cold and warm conditions in the gamma band. A significant difference was found between cold and neutral conditions for the gamma band in TP10 as well. The preliminary results presented in this study bring to the conclusion that wearable devices could be used for EEG measurements applied to thermal comfort assessment. Nevertheless, given the low data quality provided by such devices, a pre-processing procedure is required to make data free from artefatcs and reliable for the analysis. Future developments will include other physiological parameters in conjunction with the EEG to investigate the percepetion in indoor environments.