Purpose: Since the advent of smart phones, the amount of time spending on their use has rapidly increased and there are several health concerns regarding sight, causing prolonged smart phones viewing. The purpose of this study was to estimate how much eyes become fatigued based on quantitative electroencephalogram(qEEG) and to analyze the correlation between the fatigue and attention using event-related potentials(ERPs) as objective assessments. Methods: here were thirty, healthy, right-handed subjects(male 15, female 15) participating in this study. 64-channel of qEEG data with their eye-closed was collected and they performed Go/Nogo tasks before and after watching smart phones. A questionnaire regarding the visual fatigue was also collected in both conditions. The changes of pre- and post-task of watching smart phones were analyzed and compared in terms of four wavebands and algorithms, delta(δ), theta(θ), alpha(α), beta(β), (α+ θ)/ β, α/ β, (α+θ)/(α+β), and θ/ β for fatigue detection. Results: The results clearly show that all four energy values of qEEG and algorithms related to the fatigue in the post-viewing condition significantly changed than those in the pre-viewing condition. As seen in the results of ERP, nogo-N2 amplitude only on Fz electrode was slightly higher and nogo-P3 amplitudes on Fz and Cz were considerably lower in the post-task than in the pre-watching. However, there were no significant differences of go-N2 and P3 found at any electrodes. The results of behavioral performance demonstrate that the error rates(ER) of nogo-condition were obviously increased after using smart phones and there was a tendency for reaction time(RT) to be delayed compared with before watching it. Conclusions: This research denotes that it can be a fairly useful measure for using qEEG and ERP when assessing the visual fatigue. Its findings suggest that a sustained smart phone viewing leads to the visual fatigue and it can have adverse effects on distraction.

• Yoon-Hee Kim(Department of optometry, Eulji University)
• Hyun-Sung Leem(Department of optometry, Eulji University)