Decontamination of Physiological Signals of Mental effort

A significant research investment has been made by the Air Force into the use of physiological measures of an operator's condition, including level of mental workload, fatigue, and the effects of stressors such as acceleration, illness, or drugs. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to transition promising research findings into operational applications, because in-flight physiological recordings are contaminated by instrumental and physiological artifacts. Advances in cockpit recording technology have all but eliminated instrumental artifacts. Here we propose to tackle the remaining obstacle by developing an advanced signal processing system for Real-time physiological Artifact Detection And Reduction (RADAR). We will leverage our previous development of effective algorithms for detecting movement, eye, muscle, and other artifacts, and for efficiently reducing the effects of eye and muscle contaminants, in EEG data collected in the laboratory. During Phase I we will test the effectiveness of these algorithms on data recorded in flight to determine needed improvements and extensions, and then formulate a plan for the Phase II effort in which a complete solution to the problem of detecting and eliminating contaminants in in-flight physiological recordings will be implemented.