TY - JOUR
T1 - Investigation of the effect of EEG-BCI on the simultaneous execution of flight simulation and attentional tasks
AU - Vecchiato, Giovanni
AU - Borghini, Gianluca
AU - Aricò, Pietro
AU - Graziani, Ilenia
AU - Maglione, Anton Giulio
AU - Cherubino, Patrizia
AU - Babiloni, Fabio
PY - 2015/12/8
Y1 - 2015/12/8
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Alertness
KW - Brain computer interface
KW - Electroencephalography
KW - Flight simulator
KW - Vigilance
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U2 - 10.1007/s11517-015-1420-6
DO - 10.1007/s11517-015-1420-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84949487593
SP - 1
EP - 11
JO - Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing
JF - Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing
SN - 0140-0118
ER -