Investigation of the effect of EEG-BCI on the simultaneous execution of flight simulation and attentional tasks

Abstract

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are widely used for clinical applications and exploited to design robotic and interactive systems for healthy people. We provide evidence to control a sensorimotor electroencephalographic (EEG) BCI system while piloting a flight simulator and attending a double attentional task simultaneously. Ten healthy subjects were trained to learn how to manage a flight simulator, use the BCI system, and answer to the attentional tasks independently. Afterward, the EEG activity was collected during a first flight where subjects were required to concurrently use the BCI, and a second flight where they were required to simultaneously use the BCI and answer to the attentional tasks. Results showed that the concurrent use of the BCI system during the flight simulation does not affect the flight performances. However, BCI performances decrease from the 83 to 63 % while attending additional alertness and vigilance tasks. This work shows that it is possible to successfully control a BCI system during the execution of multiple tasks such as piloting a flight simulator with an extra cognitive load induced by attentional tasks. Such framework aims to foster the knowledge on BCI systems embedded into vehicles and robotic devices to allow the simultaneous execution of secondary tasks.

EEG-Based Cognitive Control Behaviour Assessment: an Ecological study with Professional Air Traffic Controllers

“…Brain activations are generally correlated to specific cognitive phenomena 39 . In fact, literature evidences show that an increase of EEG activity, especially in the theta band over the frontal cortex has been observed when the demand of executive control (attention and working memory) 40–42 , the activation of decision-making processes (like resolution of conflicts and error detection 43 ), problem solving demand 44 , mental workload request 38, 45–51 , and the task complexity are high 16, 17, 19, 52 . Additionally, theta rhythms, engaged in the hippocampus/PFC (prefrontal cortex), potentially interplays in the consolidation of memory and empirical results reports the effect of enhanced theta oscillations on memory consolidation 53–57 , and induction of long-term plasticity 58–60 .…”

Use of Brain-Computer Interfaces Under Extreme Environmental Conditions

“…In the fi elds of medicine, aviation and astronautics psychology, a number of factors that infl uence the physical and psychological function of people during fl ights and space journeys have long been identifi ed [65,14,31,64]. The most common factors include hypergravity, acceleration, changes nication with and steering of individual devices can be analogous to active BCIs, i.e.…”

Neurophysiological Measures of the Perception of Antismoking Public Service Announcements Among Young Population

“…The increase in the frontal theta in parallel of the mental effort increase has been specifically identified as peculiar of the mental effort, since the physical effort produces instead an increase in alpha and beta one power (Smit et al, 2005). Furthermore, it has been seen frontal theta to rise in correspondence to the task complexity (Gevins et al, 1998; Aricò et al, 2016; Toppi et al, 2016; Vecchiato et al, 2016). Additionally, Gevins and colleagues provided evidences of frontal theta activity increase in correspondence of high task load in an n -back task, further supporting the relation between this index and the mental workload concept (Gevins et al, 1997, 1998; Smith and Gevins, 2005a,b).…”