EAPSI:Leveraging Neural Oscillations in Aviation and Beyond

Gougelet Robert J, San Diego CA

Investigators

Abstract

Aviation safety is important now and will be for many years to come. Despite the increasing use of autopilot and fly-by-wire flight management systems, nothing can replace the skills of a well-trained pilot. There is, however, a small collection of visual, vestibular, somatogravic, and proprioceptive illusions that afflict pilots under particular flight dynamics and conditions. These primarily originate from a mismatch among incoming sensory information sources and the information entailed in producing and executing a pilot?s actions, i.e. a failure in sensorimotor integration. Moreover, recent neuroscience findings have demonstrated a fundamental role of neural oscillations across the cerebral cortex in supporting sensorimotor integration. This project aims to investigate the role of ongoing neural oscillations in sensorimotor integration and its afflictions during an aviation simulation. This research will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Callan, a noted expert on aviation neuroscience, at the Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNET) in Osaka, Japan. The approach of this project is to collect multimodal neuroimaging data: first, using electroencephalography (EEG) while participants perform an aviation task designed to elicit varying degrees of sensorimotor integration in a six degree-of-freedom motion platform flight simulator; second, using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during an equivalent task. We seek to understand sensorimotor integration in the brain, as mediated by neural oscillatory dynamics, e.g. cross-frequency phase-amplitude coupling, in order to inform the future design of brain-computer interfaces and adaptive flight systems. Detecting these neural states in silico and in situ will provide a proof-of-concept for a new form of human-system interfacing, providing unprecedented situational awareness of the cognitive state of pilot users, as well as potential spin-off technological interventions for disorders of perceptual and motor regulation. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.