In the month of October I will be focusing on trying to better understand what happens to the brain after long term stress and general strain on the brain – burnout you might call it. 

And, I will specifically look at how these effects shows up in EEG measures, and how we can use EEG to track, diagnose and treat long terms stress.

🧠 Burnout rewires brain rhythms

EEG studies show that long-term stress often reduces alpha power (linked to calm focus) and sometimes increases theta power (linked to strain and fatigue).

🔗 Connectivity breakdown signals burnout

Research finds that burnout weakens functional connectivity, especially in areas responsible for attention and emotion regulation. This loss of coordinated activity may underlie difficulties in focus, decision-making, and emotional balance during chronic stress.

In the first study of today’s newsletter - Golonka et al, 2019 - the authors compared EEG scans of individuals experiencing burnout, with a control group.

Burnout was assessed using to well established questionnaires and the study included 46 employees with burnout, and 49 without.

The EEG scan was done with both eyes open and eyes closed.

The study found that employees experiencing burnout had a significantly lower alpha power in the eyes closed condition.

Likewise in a study by LuMauro et al 2022, the authors wanted to investigate how the brainwave signature might changes as a result of prolonged stress.

The authors did this by doing EEG scan on frontline frontline healthcare workers two times during covid and comparing that to the measurements of healthcare professionals in Covid-free units.

The authors did the EEG scan during the outbreak of covid along with some relevant questionnaires and again 6 months later. 

Interestingly, the results showed that already at the outbreak there were some differences between the two groups.

Frontline operators showed higher Theta power across certain brain areas, and a lower peak alpha amplitude.

6 months later these group differences was less pronounced.

However, in the group of frontline operators, the inter hemisphere coherence which is a measure of coordination of neural signals across hemispheres, decreased from the first to the second measure, as did performance on the stroop test.

The authors argue that the initial differences in Theta and Alpha brainwaves might indicate an acute stress response while afterwards the healthcare workers might adapt and especially the negative development in coherences and stroop performance in the group of frontline operators might show a signature of prolonged stress/cognitive strain.

Want to try a stroop test for yourself?

👉Remember you have access to our resource site with, amongst else, a stroop test.

Functional connectivity refers to how different regions of the brain communicate and work together by showing coordinated activity over time. It doesn’t measure physical connections, but rather how brain areas are functionally linked during tasks or rest.

And that brain coherence and functional connectivity should be a marker of burnout is supported elsewhere. 

For example, in a study by Afek et al, 2025.

In this study, the authors compared brain measurements of 49 burned out employees with 49 employees without burnout. 

They found that burnout was linked to reduced functional connectivity, specifically in what is known as Alpha3 band (11-13 Hz) during open eyes measurements. 

Moreover, this difference was most clear in areas like the right frontal and midline areas, which are areas associated with executive functioning, emotional regulation and attention. 

This general picture of burnout often showing up as reduced alpha power and sometimes as increased theta power is confirmed by a recent review article by Chmiel et al 2025.

Moreover, this review confirms that burnout can often change measures of brain connectivity, making it an important measure to track if concerned about burnout.

Across these included studies, its clear that long term stress and burnout does seem to lead to functional changes in the brain.

EEG measures could be used to track and therefore maybe prevent burnout, and especially tracking alpha and theta brainwaves show some promise.

However, the science is not all clear and there are mixed findings.

Tracking functional connectivity might be a better option, and I believe that combining measures of functional connectivity with measures of Alpha and Theta power might be the best way to track the potential emergence of burnout.

Understanding these trends in the scientific literature could be helpful, as EEG equipment is becoming more and more available.

I imagine a future where we track our brains strain and recovery-status just like many of us now use wearables like Garmin or Whoop to track our physical activity and ”readiness scores”.

Articles used for this newsletter:

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