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Oculata Manus
Published in Stephen Temple, Developing Creative Thinking in Beginning Design, 2018
Dr. Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University, has conducted studies in which she asked children who had not yet learned to read or write to reproduce a letter form or shape presented to them. The children, “were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again. The researchers found that the initial duplication process mattered a great deal. When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write: the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex. By contrast, children who typed or traced the letter or shape showed no such effect.” (Konnikova 2014) The role of the hand is significant in the learning process. The differences in neural activity generated by freehand drawing as opposed to tracing or typing was attributed “to the messiness inherent in free-form handwriting: Not only must we first plan and execute the action in a way that is not required when we have a traceable outline, but we are also likely to produce a result that is highly variable. That variability may itself be a learning tool. “‘When a kid produces a messy letter,’ Dr. James said, ‘that might help him learn it’” (Konnikova 2014).
Functional Optical Brain Imaging
Published in Hualou Liang, Joseph D. Bronzino, Donald R. Peterson, Biosignal Processing, 2012
As a summary, fNIR results were sensitive to task difficulty specifically at left inferior frontal gyrus in the n-back test. These are in line with the earlier results [21] and with the results of fMRI studies that have used the n-back task [114]. The main hypothesis of this project is that VoiceComm would require more cognitive resources than the DataComm condition. Hence, higher activation for VoiceComm would be expected. The fNIR results from the main effect of communication type (p < 0.05) confirms this hypothesis with a small to moderate effect size (d = 0.36). These fNIR results are also in line with subjective assessments of operators as reported in earlier studies. This study indicated that operator’s cognitive effort for different types of tasks can be objectively assessed by comparing fNIR results. One of the major advantages of using fNIR in this study is that it allowed monitoring brain activity of the ground operators in realistic settings.
Human Performance Assessment: Evaluation of Wearable Sensors for Monitoring Brain Activity
Published in Michael A. Vidulich, Pamela S. Tsang, Improving Aviation Performance through Applying Engineering Psychology, 2019
Kurtulus Izzetoglu, Dale Richards
The improvements we are seeing in wearable technologies presents the experimenter with technology that has the ability to assess the human in a dynamic context (where data are related directly to the task they are performing and can also be deployed within naturalistic settings). Devices that specifically target the neurophysiological mechanism associated with the brain activity are of particular interest, as these measurements could provide a real-time correlation between higher cognitive function and the task the human is conducting. In this chapter, we have seen the application of fNIRS to both UAV Sensor Operator and Air Traffic Control Operator. We have discussed studies that demonstrate how fNIRS can be applied to the UAV SO role and revealed that participant scanning behavior was directly related to changes in the oxygenation levels in different regions of the PFC. This finding supports previous suggestions that this region of the brain supports executive functions, such as visual attention (see Fan, McCandliss, Fossella, Flombaum, & Posner, 2005). Stimulation to this area has also been found to enhance cognitive performance in relation to attentional demand (Weiss & Lavidor, 2012). When we apply this same technology to assess ATCO behavior we observe an increase in oxygenation within the inferior frontal gyrus region of the PFC. This part of the brain has been associated with working memory (Becker, Androsch, Jahn, Alich, Striepens, Markett, Maier, & Hurlemann, 2013; Luo & Niki, 2000); thus, activation of this area will allow us to assess the presentation of information to an operator, or even the manner in which training can allow for better use of cognitive strategies associated with working memory.
A Functional BCI Model by the P2731 working group: Physiology
Published in Brain-Computer Interfaces, 2021
Ali Hossaini, Davide Valeriani, Chang S. Nam, Raffaele Ferrante, Mufti Mahmud
Diagrams of cerebral anatomy associate specific structures with function, but, when considering a phrase such as visual cortex or speech center, the word ‘primary’ is an important qualifier. The brain can be mapped into regions that differ in their cellular organization, and these regions often correspond to meaningful functions. For instance, speech production and comprehension are, respectively, related to Broca’s area, which is located in the inferior frontal gyrus [25] and Wernicke’s area, which centers on the posterior end of the left temporal gyrus. Attempts to map cerebral regions and to identify regions with functions began in the early 20th century. No consensus on the number of cerebral regions exists, and most researchers admit more work needs to be done, but convincing arguments are made for at least 180 functional regions per hemisphere [14].