ABSTRACT
Hasan Aya/, Ben Willemi, Scott Bunce3, Patricia A. Shewoki/,4, Kurtulus Izzetoglui, Sehchang Hah2, Atul R. Deshmukh2, Banu Onaral1
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIR) is a highly portable, safe neuroimaging technology that uses light to measure cortical brain activity. We have utilized fNIR to provide objective measures of cognitive workload of certified Air Traffic Controllers while they managed realistic scenarios under typical and emergent conditions. Participants also completed an n-back task, which is a
standardized working memory and attention task with four incremental levels of difficulty. In the n-back results, as task difficulty increases, accuracy and speed of the participants decrease monotonically. B lood oxygenation changes, as measured by fNIR, monotonically increased with increasing task difficulty. These findings are in line with earlier studies . Further, iNIR measures were analyzed for comparison between data-based communication and voice-based communication during an air traffic control tasks . The results revealed less brain activation for electronic than for voice communications, which is also in agreement with our primary hypothesis .
