title: Investigation of the effect of EEG-BCI on the simultaneous execution of flight simulation and attentional tasks.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy. giovanni.vecchiato@uniroma1.it.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6037-5806
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Vecchiato
authors.affiliation: BrainSigns srl, Rome, Italy.|IRCCS "Fondazione Santa Lucia", Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Gianluca
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Borghini
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.|BrainSigns srl, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Aricò
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.|BrainSigns srl, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Ilenia
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Graziani
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.|BrainSigns srl, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Anton Giulio
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Maglione
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.|BrainSigns srl, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Patrizia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cherubino
authors.affiliation: BrainSigns srl, Rome, Italy.|IRCCS "Fondazione Santa Lucia", Rome, Italy.|Department of Molecular Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Fabio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Babiloni
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001359:Aviation; D062207:Brain-Computer Interfaces; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Alertness; Brain computer interface; Electroencephalography; Flight simulator; Vigilance