Neuroergonomics as the scientific study of the human brain in relation to performance at work and everyday settings ( Parasuraman, 2003) is faced with the challenge to investigate the brain dynamics in environments that require physical interaction of the operator with a system. Following the embodied cognition approach those alterations will change the concurring cognitive processes and thereby lead to different brain activity. This kind of idiothetic information is absent when movement is restricted or altered in case the body orientation differs from its natural state for a particular task.
These constraints are changing the way information is perceived and processed by the human agent as becomes obvious, for example, with respect to the integration of proprioceptive and vestibular information ( Gramann, 2013). This view led to experimental setups that restrict participants’ mobility and require them to sit still or lie even in tasks that would require standing or moving ( Makeig et al., 2009 Gramann et al., 2011, 2014). However, conventional neuroimaging studies consider electrical potentials generated by eye movement or muscle activity during physical movements as artifacts that have to be avoided not to contaminate the signal of interest. Thus it appears that perception and action should both be considered when studying cognitive processes and their neural basis. The embodied cognition paradigm claims that the body’s interactions with the world are an essential root of cognitive processes ( Wilson, 2002). Studying human brain dynamics accompanying natural cognition ( Gramann et al., 2014) works best by studying the brain under naturalistic conditions. Using MoBI in naturalistic working environments can thus help to analyze brain dynamics in natural working conditions and help improving unhealthy or inefficient work settings. The results demonstrate that visual event-related potentials (ERPs) can be analyzed for simple button presses and physical pointing responses and that it is possible to quantify the contribution of brain processes, muscle activity and eye movements to the signal recorded at the sensor level even for fast volatile arm movements with strong jerks. Using a mobile brain/body imaging approach (MoBI) including independent component analysis (ICA) with subsequent backprojection of cluster activity allowed for systematically describing the contribution of brain and non-brain sources to the sensor signal. To investigate the brain dynamics accompanying rapid volatile movements we used a visual oddball paradigm where participants had to react to color changes either with a simple button press or by physically pointing towards a moving target. Overcoming the restrictions of existing imaging methods would allow for deeper insights into neurocognitive processes at workplaces that require physical interactions and thus could help to adapt work settings to the user. However, movements that require the operator to react fast and to adapt to a dynamically changing environment occur frequently in working environments like assembly-line work, construction trade, health care, but also outside the working environment like in team sports. Existing brain imaging approaches do not allow for an investigation of brain dynamics during active behavior because their sensors cannot follow the movement of the signal source. The non-invasive recording and analysis of human brain activity during active movements in natural working conditions is a central challenge in Neuroergonomics research.
Evelyn Jungnickel 1* and Klaus Gramann 1,2
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