Multimodal Cognitive Assessment System

We propose to investigate the design of a multimodal cognitive assessment system (MCAS)to seamlessly integrate recording and analysis technologies and enhance the arousal state and decision-making performance of the war fighter under stressful conditions.Our plan is to define a multimodal psychophysiological data collection and analysis system architecture for the development of future technologies capable of delivering cognitive status updates and augmenting the presentation of critical data to a timewhen the operator is aroused and attentive and best able to process and retain information. Our proposed technology would analyze brainwave patterns associated with higher order executive processing, as well as, eye and heart measures to intelligentlyidentify variability in arousal, stress, and cognitive workload capacity and manage the interface of these data for fitness assessment and task assignment. Our innovative technology would provide behavioral and workload assessment researchers with newtools to investigate higher order cognitive and automomic mechanisms involved in operational decision-making under high stress conditions. Quantifying a war fighter's cognitive state under stressful conditions is a multifaceted problem that is unlikelyto be solved by any single effort. What is required are tools that aid the creation of new experiments designed to study the stages of mental effort in actual operational situations from many different viewpoints and with multiple populations taking intoaccount cognitive processing differences based on ability, age, sex, and stress from fatique, injury, or workload. With portable tools to acquire multimodal signals and measure task specific attentiveness and stress changes, workload researchers will beable to gather psychophysiological data in real-world settings and enhance the interoperability of computer-based war fighter systems. Therefore, we intend to develop an inexpensive and easy to use MCAS that includes tools for sensor integration, taskdesign and analysis, and wireless transmission capabilities to take cognitive monitoring technologies out of the lab and into the field.