Study on Peppermint Scent Interventions for Fatigue Driving

Urban migration has contributed to the transformation of China’s smart cities, but it has also brought problems such as traffic congestion and fatigue driving, which affect the healthy lives of megacities residents. In this study, 11 subjects participated in a simulated driving experiment to research the effect of peppermint scent as an intervention for driving fatigue. The average power spectral density of the driver’s EEG was calculated, and the EEG indicator $\boldsymbol{R}$ was extracted. Adopting a paired samples t-test, $\boldsymbol{R}_{(\alpha/\beta)}$ was selected as the fatigue driving identification indicator and validated against the subjective questionnaire results. Paired samples t-test analysis of subjective fatigue and $\boldsymbol{R}_{(\alpha/\beta)}$ reveals that peppermint scent significantly reduces driving fatigue and that peppermint flavour significantly reduces drowsiness within 4 minutes. This study will be useful for future applications of peppermint scent to reduce driving fatigue.