Neurobiological differences in mental rotation and instrument interpretation in airline pilots.
Airline pilots and similar professions require reliable spatial cognition abilities, such as mental imagery of static and moving three-dimensional objects in space. A well-known task to investigate these skills is the Shepard and Metzler mental rotation task (SMT), which is also frequently used during pre-assessment of pilot candidates. Despite the intuitive relationship between real-life spatial cognition and SMT, several studies have challenged its predictive value. Here we report on a novel instrument interpretation task (IIT) based on a realistic attitude indicator used in modern aircrafts that was designed to bridge the gap between the abstract SMT and a cockpit environment. We investigated 18 professional airline pilots using fMRI. No significant correlation was found between SMT and IIT task accuracies. Contrasting both tasks revealed higher activation in the fusiform gyrus, angular gyrus, and medial precuneus for IIT, whereas SMT elicited significantly stronger activation in pre- and supplementary motor areas, as well as lateral precuneus and superior parietal lobe. Our results show that SMT skills per se are not sufficient to predict task accuracy during (close to) real-life instrument interpretation. While there is a substantial overlap of activation across the task conditions, we found that there are important differences between instrument interpretation and non-aviation based mental rotation.
MR Center of Excellence, Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
Ronald
R
Sladky
MR Center of Excellence, Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.|Cognitive Science Research Platform, University of Vienna, Austria.
Irene
I
Stepniczka
National Aerospace Centre (NLR), Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Edzard
E
Boland
MR Center of Excellence, Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
Martin
M
Tik
Cognitive Science Research Platform, University of Vienna, Austria.|Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna.
Claus
C
Lamm
MR Center of Excellence, Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
André
A
Hoffmann
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Braunschweig, Germany.
Jan-Philipp
JP
Buch
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Braunschweig, Germany.
Dominik
D
Niedermeier
National Aerospace Centre (NLR), Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Joris
J
Field
MR Center of Excellence, Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
Christian
C
Windischberger
D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D016743:Mental Competency; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D009446:Neurobiology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D000070356:Pilots; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D012399:Rotation; D065854:Spatial Navigation / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013702:Temporal Lobe