Key result
The flight environment significantly increased pilots' alpha-ERS oscillation amplitude and Pe amplitude during aware errors compared to ground participants.
Why the study?
Human error significantly affects mission execution during long-duration, high-intensity pilot tasks, necessitating deeper study of the physiological characteristics of different erroneous states of consciousness.
Does the flight environment alter EEG signatures of error awareness during cognitive tasks in pilots compared to ground conditions?
Observational (n=87)
No
Does the flight environment alter EEG signatures of error awareness during cognitive tasks in pilots compared to ground conditions?
Pilots in a flight environment exhibit more prominent EEG signatures of error awareness, such as higher Pe amplitude and α-ERS oscillation, compared to ground conditions.
May heighten pilots' EEG error awareness markers in flight; hypothesis-generating and should not yet change practice or training.
At present, many scientific experiments are carried out in extreme conditions. Pilots need to perform high-intensity tasks for a long time. Human error is an essential factor affecting mission execution. To deeply study the physiological characteristics of different erroneous states of consciousness, we used an improved double-choice Oddball paradigm to collect brain electrophysiological signals of volunteers and pilots in missions and analyze event-related potential (ERP), time-frequency, and brain function spectrum, extracting EEG indicators sensitive to error awareness. The results showed that, in the 300∼500 ms time window, the error awareness type was correlated with Pe amplitude. Meanwhile, the time-frequency and brain functional spectrum analysis showed that the amplitude of the aware errors α-ERS oscillation, the functional spectral density of the α-band, and the uncertain errors were more prominent than unaware errors. The error awareness of the pilots showed the same EEG sensitivity characteristics in flight as in the ground volunteer experiment, and the characteristic sensitivity value was higher than that of the ground participants. We analyzed the EEG indicators sensitive to error awareness and determined the differences in EEG characteristics when pilots have error awareness on the ground and in flight. This study provides theoretical guidance for the follow-up research on the intervention measures against error awareness and determines the target point positioning.
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Zhang et al. (2022) conducted an observational in Healthy (Error awareness) (n=87). Flight environment vs. Ground environment was evaluated on Alpha-ERS oscillation amplitude during aware errors (p=<0.0001). The flight environment significantly increased pilots' alpha-ERS oscillation amplitude and Pe amplitude during aware errors compared to ground participants.
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