Discrimination of temporal fatigue-related states and inferred brain-function coupling in subway drivers under emotional influence.

Introduction: The mental fatigue state of subway drivers directly affects operational safety. At the same time, they are easily influenced by individual emotions and are closely related to the state of brain function. Methods: In this study, multimodal data of subway drivers during driving were collected synchronously in a simulated driving environment, including EEG signals, subjective fatigue perception, emotional states and operational performance data. First, the Toeplitz inverse covariance clustering method was used to integrate the subjective fatigue perception, emotional states and operational performance data of subway drivers to derive four data-driven fatigue states. Subsequently, the EEG signals were decomposed into four frequency bands of Results: The results showed that across the four data-driven fatigue states, the prefrontal cortex consistently occupied a central role in task planning and execution, while the other brain regions formed a dynamically coordinated network through bidirectional drive and feedback relations, suggesting systematic differences in inter-regional functional coupling patterns across the identified states.