EPIStress: A multimodal dataset of Physiological signals to measure cognitive stress in epilepsy patients

Epilepsy patients commonly report stress as a frequent seizure trigger; however, the objective seizure-stress relationship is unclear due to self-report biases and difficulty in objective quantification of stress. This work presents a dataset from twenty epilepsy patients undergoing cognitive stress elicitation protocols, participating in laboratory experiments with computer-based tasks at predefined difficulty levels, and in situational experiments by independently choosing tasks with at least two difficulty levels. Physiological signals from wearable electroencephalography, photoplethysmography, acceleration, electrodermal activity, and temperature sensors were recorded. The task-related perceived cognitive stress was collected using two 5-point Likert scales of self-reported mental workload and stress, contrasted by a pairwise NASA-TLX questionnaire. Additionally, the dataset includes a patient-reported list of seizure-provoking and -inhibiting factors. Results illustrated individual and heterogeneous responses to cognitive tasks, with some modalities yielding statistically significant features, while others demonstrated expected directional trends. The findings support the validity and suitability of the proposed dataset for cognitive stress detection and the potential to map seizure-related factors to cognitive stress events.