Integrative Platform for Cognative Workload Assessment

In modern military operating environments, military personnel are faced with the challenge of accomplishing more with less human resources. To meet this challenge, each personnel must be able to function optimally. In other words, each operator'scognitive resources must be maximized and delegation of tasks by supervisors to each operator must be based upon knowledge of the soldier's remaining cognitive capacities. Towards this end, the DoD wishes to develop an integrated workstation for themonitoring of the operator's cognitive state. In this application we propose to build a software platform that will provide the foundation for an integrated, user centered monitoring workstation. The software will provide the architecture for theintegration of multiple, cognitive-load-sensitive, psychophysiological signals and real-time analysis engines for each of these signals. This architecture will support local as well as network access to the operator's cognitive state. We will alsoconduct functional studies in which an operator's EEG, electrocardiogram, electrodermal activity, and pupilometry signals will be analyzed to index the operator's cognitive workload. These studies will test the feasibility of building an integratedmonitoring workstation of cognitive workload assessment. The anticipated benefits of developing such a platform are many. For the Augmented Cognition Project the resulting product will offer a platform for the integration of multiple psychophysiological signals. In addition it will provide a platform in whichprototype analysis engines and cognitive load gauges can be rapidly developed. Outside of the Augmented Cognition Project this software platform will be relevant to medical applications. We are currently introducing our dense-array EEG system to themedical market. In the medical market, it is not uncommon for multiple neurophysiological signals to be monitored simultaneously, such in the emergency department or intensive care unit. Therefore, the software platform that will result from thecompletion of the proposal will also be very attractive selling points in the clinical market.