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International audience; In aviation, knowing the internal state of pilots is desirable to prevent and detect abnormal situations such as an excessive cognitive workload (CW) or acute stress, both known to impact human performance [1]. Detecting these states becomes crucial with the possible emergence of Single Pilot Operations (SPO), during which tasks will be largely supported by a single pilot and the aircraft systems. The mental constructs of CW and acute stress have been extensively studied in the human factor literature, but the analysis of their respective impact in the same ecological situations remains poorly studied. In the current study, twenty-one private pilots from the French Civil Aviation University were recruited. They all performed two realistic flight simulator scenarios with the same difficult level and duration (around 35 minutes each). The CW was manipulated with the difficulty of a secondary task (low CW vs high CW; for details, see [2]) and the level of stress was manipulated by means of a social stressor (low arousal vs high arousal). We examined brain hemodynamic activity via functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) with a portable NIRS system (NIRSport, NIRx Medical Technologies, NY, USA). We recorded 14 fNIRS channels that were subdivided to create four regions of interest: left prefrontal and parietal cortex; right prefrontal and parietal cortex. Analyzes were focused on oxy-hemoglobin (Oxy-Hb) concentration changes. We found a main effect of CW (p = .01, ηp² = .31) with a higher Oxy-Hb level under high CW condition vs low CW. This effect of cognitive workload was significant particularly in the right prefrontal cortex (CW x laterality interaction, p = .01, ηp² = .21). An interaction between CW and acute stress level was also found (p= .04, ηp² = .20). Post-hoc analysis showed that the increase in Oxy-Hb concentration between high CW and low CW was significant only under high arousal.In accordance with previous research [3,4,5], our results confirmed that an augmentation in CW leads to an increase in OxyHb concentration. However, the lateralization of this effect to the right prefrontal cortex was a little unanticipated. Usually, left prefrontal cortex is the region where the maximum Oxy-Hb concentration increase was found [5] and manipulation of arousal involves the right hemisphere [6], no such result was found here. The moderate effect of the high arousal conditions tends to indicate that our stress manipulation was relatively weak [2]. However, our results emphasized that the combination of high mental workload and acute stress (high arousal condition) was the one that triggered the higher OxyHb concentration. This result supports the idea that these two constructs might interact and could promote a recruitment of further resources at the expense of unsuitable physiological cost, as proposed by the cognitive-energetical framework [7].To conclude, fNIRS can accurately assess CW fluctuation and the fusion with other measures could give some complementary information on internal state of the pilot. It has been shown to be an effective tool in cognitive neuroscience and has some interesting operational characteristics: non-invasive, portable, silent, movement tolerant, fast set-up [8].

International audience; The cognitive overload and emotion experienced by drivers become a primordial issue to study distraction. This is also the case in aviation, where pilots are commonly exposed to different sources of cognitive and emotional stressors and distractors [1]. Therefore, the integration of an online monitoring to assess the cognitive variations into the cockpit would be highly desirable to alert of delicate mental states. To this aim, reliable physiological measures are required. Electrocardiography (ECG) can be considered as one of the most suitable and cost-effective techniques providing powerful and relevant features to study driver distraction and cognitive workload [2, 3]. Heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) parameters extracted from ECG signals are employed in aeronautics to determine the impact of different levels of mental overload in performance and decision-making [4, 5]. According to their findings, an increase in HR together with a decrease in HRV will be expected when cognitive workload becomes higher. Furthermore, the personality is an important factor to take into consideration for drivers and pilots [6, 7]. Several research works have indicated a particular personality profile in pilots, whose neuroticism component is significantly lower than the population norm [8], while they score higher on the conscientiousness facets [9]. Given that physiological responses in general, and the cardiovascular activity in particular, are affected by personality traits [10, 11], it is important to consider this issue in order to better control individual differences and to reach a fine-grained interpretation of the ECG measures linked to the pilot distraction produced by a supplementary task simultaneous to the flight. In this pilot study, the HR modulation susceptibility to arousal level elicited by a social stressor and the cognitive workload is study in 21 private pilots.

International audience; Background: The monitoring of the physiological activity related to mental workload (MW) on pilots will be useful toimprove aviation safety by anticipating human performance degradation. The electrocardiogram (ECG) can reveal MWfluctuations due to either cognitive workload or/and emotional state since this measure exhibits autonomic nervous system modulations. Arguably, heart rate (HR) is one of its most intuitive and reliable parameters. It would be particularly interesting to analyze the interaction between cognitive requirements and emotion in ecologic sets such as a flight simulator. This study aims to explore by means of HR the relation between cognitive demands and emotional activation. Presumably, the effects of cognition and emotion overloads are not necessarily cumulative. Methodology: Eight healthy volunteers in possession of the Private Pilot License were recruited (male; 20.8±3.2 years). ECG signal was recorded along the whole experiment by placing two electrodes on the clavicle and left pectoral of the participants. The HR was computed within 4 minutes segments. NASA-TLX and Big Five inventories were used to assess subjective workload and to consider the influence of individual personality differences. The experiment consisted in completing two dual-tasks of approximately 30 minutes of duration into a flight simulator AL50. Each dual-task required the simultaneous accomplishment of both a pre-established flight plan and an additional task based on target stimulus discrimination inserted between Air Traffic Control instructions. This secondary task allowed us to vary the cognitive workload from low (LC) to high (HC) levels, by combining auditory and visual numerical stimuli to respond to meeting specific criteria. Regarding emotional condition, the two dual-tasks were designed to assure analogous difficulty in terms of solicited cognitive demands. The former was realized by the pilot alone, i.e. Low Arousal (LA) condition. In contrast, the latter generates a high arousal (HA), since the pilot was supervised by two evaluators, filmed and involved into a mock competition with the rest of the participants. Results: Performance for the secondary task showed significant faster reaction times (RT) for HA compared to LA condition (p=.003). Moreover, faster RT was found for LC compared to HC (p < .001) condition. No interaction was found. Concerning HR measure, despite the lack of main effects an interaction between emotion and cognition is evidenced (p=.028). Post hoc analysis showed smaller HR for HA compared to LA condition only for LC (p=.049). Conclusion. The control of an aircraft is a very complex task including strong cognitive demands and depends on the emotional state of pilots. According to the behavioral data, the experimental set has permitted to generate satisfactorily different emotional and cognitive levels. As suggested by the interaction found in HR measure, these two factors do not seem to have a cumulative impact on the sympathetic nervous system. Apparently, low cognitive workload makes pilots more sensitive to emotional variations. These results hint the independency between data processing and emotional regulation. Further physiological data are necessary to confirm and disentangle this relation. This procedure may be useful for monitoring objectively pilot’s mental workload.

The identification of physiological markers of emotional and cognitive fluctuations during a flight can be useful to alert of risky situations due to their possible impact on pilot’s mental state and performance. In this study, heart rate (HR) and other features, such as R-R peak interval variability and the spectral power of specific frequency bands, have been extracted from ECG recordings throughout flight simulations. The temporal variation of these features within different experimental conditions has been explored to verify their reliability to discriminate episodes of mental overload. Our results show that the monotonic decrease of HR reflects the emotional regulation, mainly under secondary low cognitive overload. Conversely, the increase of the root mean square successive differences was linked to higher cognitive workload situations. Furthermore, the habituation analysis reveals that these features are severely affected when an external cognitive demand