Brainshield: HREEG study of perceived pilot mental workload

The aim of the research project Brainshield is to investigate the possibility of predicting and documenting, through analysis of brain activity, the perceived pilot’s mental workload during each flight phase, specially with the occurrence of unusual or difficult attitudes. Pilot’s brain activity has been recorded and then analyzed by high resolution electroencephalography (HREEG) methodolgy. Mental workload indexes have been developed and then integrated with those derived from autonomics signals (electrocardiogram, eye blinks). At the end of each experimental session, pilots filled in the NASA-TLX test and an additional questionnaire specifically designed to obtain subjective ranks about difficulties faced off. The results presented might be congruent with the hypothesis that through brain signals analysis acquired from frontal, prefrontal and parietal brain sites it is possible to know cognitive status of a pilot during its operational flight activity. It has been proved how the relation between frontal theta activity synchronization and parietal alpha desynchronization is positively correlated with increasing of mental workload. The data showed an exhaustive overview of a pilot’s mental workload during the most difficult flight phases, providing important results for an industrial spin-off and opening to the possibility of a system development for the online mental workload monitoring, capable to give the pilots and the avionic system a feedback further enhancing the flight safety.