A Method for Quantifying the Emotional Intensity and Duration of a Startle Reaction with Customized Fractal Dimensions of EEG Signals

The assessment of emotions with fractal dimensions of EEG signals has been attempted before, but the quantification of the intensity and duration of sudden and short emotions remains a challenge. This paper suggests a method for this purpose, by using a new fractal dimension algorithm and by adjusting the amplitude of the EEG signal in order to obtain maximal separation of high and low fractal dimensions. The emotion was induced by embedding a scary image at 20 seconds in landscape videos of 60 seconds length. The new method did not only detect the onset of the emotion correctly, but also revealed its duration and intensity. The intensity is based on the magnitude and impulse of the fractal dimension signal. It is also shown that Higuchi’s method does not always detect emotion spikes correctly; on the contrary, the region of the expected emotional response can be represented by fractal dimensions smaller than the rest of the signal, whereas the new method directly reveals distinct spikes. The duration of these spikes was 10 11 seconds. The magnitude of these spikes varied across the EEG channels. The build-up and cool-down of the emotions can occur with steep and flat gradients.