Flight experience and executive functions predict unlike professional pilots who are limited by the FAA's age rule, no age limit is defined in general aviation (GA)

Unlike professional pilots who are limited by the FAA's age rule, no age limit is defined in general aviation (GA). Some studies revealed significant aging issues on accident rates but these results are criticized. Our overall goal is to study how the effect of age on executive functions (EFs), high level cognitive abilities, impacts on the flying performance in GA pilots. This study relies on three components: EFs assessment, pilot characteristics (age, flight experience), and the navigation performance on a flight simulator. The results showed that contrary to age, reasoning, working memory (WM) and total flight experience were predictive of the flight performance. These results suggest that "cognitive age", derived in this study by the cognitive evaluation, is a better mean than "chronological age" consideration to predict the ability to pilot, in particular because of the inter-individual variability of aging impact and the beneficial effect of the flight experience

Executive functions and pilot characteristics predict flight simulator performance in general aviation pilots

In general aviation, 85% of the crashes seem to be caused by pilots' errors (Li, Baker, Grabowski, & Rebok, 2001) and 46% of the crashes occur at airports (Li & Baker, 1999). It is important to determine if the same factors influence the flying performance and the landing decision making and to uncover which factors, among the pilot's cognitive status, personality traits, and experience, are the most predictive. We examined in 24 general aviation pilots the relationship between those factors and the flying performance and weather-related decision-making relevance. The cognitive assessment encompassed the three basic executive functions (Miyake et al., 2000), reasoning, and psychomotor velocity. The personal characteristics were age, flight experience, and level of impulsivity. Reasoning, updating in working memory, and flight experience were predictive of the flight performance. In addition, updating in working memory, flight experience, and level of impulsivity were linked with weather-related decision-making relevance

Effects of the audiovisual conflict on auditory early processes

Auditory alarm misperception is one of the critical events that lead aircraft pilots to an erroneous flying decision. The rarity of these alarmsassociatedwith their possible unreliabilitymay play a role in thismisperception. In order to investigate this hypothesis, we manipulated both audiovisual conflict and sound rarity in a simplified landing task. Behavioral data and event related potentials (ERPs) of thirteen healthy participants were analyzed. We found that the presentation of a rare auditory signal (i.e. an alarm), incongruent with visual information, led to a smaller amplitude of the auditory N100 (i.e. less negative) compared to the condition in which both signals were congruent.Moreover, the incongruity between the visual information and the rare sound did not significantly affect reaction times, suggesting that the rare sound was neglected. We propose that the lower N100 amplitude reflects an early visual-to-auditory gating that depends on the rarity of the sound. In complex aircraft environments, this early effect might be partly responsible for auditory alarm insensitivity. Our results provide a new basis for future aeronautic studies and the development of countermeasures

Economic issues provokes hazardous landing decision-making by enhancing the activity of "emotional" neural pathways

The analysis of aeronautical accidents highlights the fact that some airline pilots demonstrate a trend to land whereas the approach is not well stabilized. This behavior seems to be the consequence of various factors, including financial issues. Our hypothesis is that financial constraints modulate the brain circuitry of emotion and reward, in particular via the interactions between two prefrontal structures: the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex(DLPFC), main center of the executive functions (EFs), high level cognitive abilities, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), structure linked with the limbic system, major substratum of emotional processes. In our experiment, participants performed a simplified task of landing in which the level of uncertainty and the financial incentive were manipulated. A preliminary behavioral experiment (n = 12) was conducted. A similar second experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is in progress and a case study only is reported here. The behavioral data showed that the participants made more risky decision to land in the financial incentive condition in comparison to the neutral condition, where no financial incentive was delivered. This was particularly true when the uncertainty was high. The functional neuroimaging results showed that the reasoning performed in neutral condition resulted in enhanced activity in DLPFC. On the contrary, under the influence of the financial incentive, VMPFC activity was increased. These results showed the effectiveness of the financial incentive to bias decision-making toward a more risky and less rational behavior from a safety point of view. Functional neuroimaging data showed a shift from cold to hot reasoning in presence of the financial incentive, suggesting that pilot erroneous trend to land could be explained by a temporary perturbation of the decision-making process due to the negative emotional consequences associated with the go-around

Positive and negative emotion induction through avatars and its impact on reasoning performance: cardiovascular and pupillary correlates

International audienceMany studies have shown the impact of emotion on cognition (Damasio, 1994), however these influences remain ambiguous. The contradictions may be explained by a lack of experimental control (emotional induction, objective clues on emotional states...) but also by the existence of complex cross-influences between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a major substratum of executive functions (EFs) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area strongly connected to the limbic system. This work aimed at gaining a more precise view of the links between emotion and EFs, utilizing an experimental protocol that used avatars for a well-controlled emotional induction, measurements of the autonomic nervous system activity as evidence of the emotional state (cardiovascular and pupillary responses) and a neuropsychological test battery (dynamic reasoning and deductive reasoning tasks) for the detection of EFs variations in response to emotion. The experimental data showed that positive emotion (joy) led to a performance decrease during both tasks, together with physiological variations. These counterintuitive results showed that positive mood can impair executive functioning in our tasks. In addition, our results highlighted the lack of learning effects on deductive performance

Marqueurs physiologiques du stress et modélisation de la persévération chez les pilotes

Compte tenu de l’augmentation constante du trafic, le nombre absolu d’accidents aéronautiques est en légère augmentation. Si la tendance persiste, il est prévu un accident par semaine pour l’aviation commerciale en 2010. Il ressort qu'environ 70 à 80% des incidents aéronautiques trouvent leur explication dans l’erreur humaine. Le stress ressenti par l’équipage au cours de phases de vols très dégradées ainsi que la pression opérationnelle sont des facteurs extrêmement courants de catastrophes aériennes. Ils génèrent une « persévération », état dans lequel le pilote s’enferre dans des stratégies erronées et focalise excessivement son attention sur un seul aspect de la situation tout en étant insensible aux alarmes visuelles et sonores. Un premier objectif est d’obtenir une meilleure compréhension de la dynamique des processus neuronaux sous-tendant la persévération au cours du pilotage grâce à une expérimentation en imagerie par résonance magnétique fonctionnelle (IRMf). Un second objectif est de disposer de marqueurs physiologiques pertinents pour constituer un vecteur d’état, tels que la pression cardiaque, le diamètre pupillaire ou la résistance électrodermale, en vue de détecter précocement le basculement du pilote vers cet situation, afin de réagir très tôt par des contremesures cognitives. Ces contremesures cognitives constituent l’objectif final et seront fondées sur les connaissances acquises dans la réalisation des 2 premiers objectifs

Induced emotions and impact on reasoning and decision-making

Induced emotions and impact on reasoning and decision-making : contribution of virtual reality and autonomous nervous system measurement

Emotion induction through virtual avatars and its impact on reasoning: evidence from autonomous nervous system measurements and cognitive assessment

Many studies have shown the impact of emotion on cognition (Damasio 1995; Phelps 2004), however these influences remain ambiguous. The contradictions may be explained by a lack of experimental control but also by the existence of complex cross-influences between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a major substratum of the executive functions (EFs) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area strongly connected to the limbic system (Simpson 2001a). This work aims at gaining a more precise view of the links between emotion and EFs thanks to an experimental protocol that uses Virtual Reality (avatars) for a controlled emotional conditioning, measurements of the autonomous nervous system (ANS) as evidence of the emotional variations and a neuropsychological test battery for the detection of EFs variations, especially reasoning. The battery’s major tasks consist in deductive reasoning and reasoning in dynamic situations. The experimental data show that positive conditioning leads to a performance decrease (in agreement with Phillips et al. (2002a)), together with physiological variations (cardiac and pupillary activity). Moreover negative conditioning leads to ineffective actions: more actions (Dynamic task), more quickly (Deductive task) with no performance variation. These results may have applications in neuropsychology, for the assessment and the rehabilitation of patients (Mateer et al. 2005) and in neuroergonomics in the field of complex working situations where emotions may cause accidents (e.g. potential source of air crashes, Dehais et al. 2003)

N270 sensitivity to conflict strength and working memory: A combined ERP and sLORETA study

The event-related potential N270 component is known to be an electrophysiological marker of the supramodal conflict processing. However little is know about the factors that may modulate its amplitude. In particular, among all studies that have investigated the N270, little or no control of the conflict strength and of the load in working memory have been done leaving a lack in the understanding of this component. We designed a spatial audiovisual conflict task with simultaneous target and cross-modal distractor to evaluate the N270 sensitivity to the conflict strength (i.e., visual target with auditory distractor or auditory target with visual distractor) and the load in working memory (goal task maintenance with frequent change in the target modality). In a first session, participants had to focus on one modality for the target position to be considered (left-hand or right-hand) while the distractor could be at the same side (compatible) or at opposite side (incompatible). In a second session, we used the same set of stimuli as in the first session with an additional distinct auditory signal that clued the participants to frequently switch between the auditory and the visual targets. We found that (1) reaction times and N270 amplitudes for conflicting situations were larger within the auditory target condition compared to the visual one, (2) the increase in target maintenance effort led to equivalent increase of both reaction times and N270 amplitudes within all conditions and (3) the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex current density was higher for both conflicting and active maintenance of the target situations. These results provide new evidence that the N270 component is an electrophysiological marker of the supramodal conflict processing that is sensitive to the conflict strength and that conflict processing and active maintenance of the task goal are two functions of a common executive attention system

Monitoring Cognitive and Emotional Processes Through Pupil and Cardiac Response During Dynamic Versus Logical Task

The paper deals with the links between physiological measurements and cognitive and emotional functioning. As long as the operator is a key agent in charge of complex systems, the definition of metrics able to predict his performance is a great challenge. The measurement of the physiological state is a very promising way but a very acute comprehension is required; in particular few studies compare autonomous nervous system reactivity according to specific cognitive processes during task performance and task related psychological stress is often ignored. We compared physiological parameters recorded on 24 healthy subjects facing two neuropsychological tasks: a dynamic task that require problem solving in a world that continually evolves over time and a logical task representative of cognitive processes performed by operators facing everyday problem solving. Results showed that the mean pupil diameter change was higher during the dynamic task; conversely, the heart rate was more elevated during the logical task. Finally, the systolic blood pressure seemed to be strongly sensitive to psychological stress. A better taking into account of the precise influence of a given cognitive activity and both workload and related task-induced psychological stress during task performance is a promising way to better monitor operators in complex working situations to detect mental overload or pejorative stress factor of error