Neuroergonomics: Quantitative Modeling of Individual, Shared, and Team Neurodynamic Information

Exploring how healthcare teams balance the neurodynamics of autonomous and collaborative behaviors: a proof of concept

Team members co-regulate their activities and move together at the collective level of behavior while coordinating their actions toward shared goals. In parallel with team processes, team members need to resolve uncertainties arising from the changing task and environment. In this exploratory study we have measured the differential neurodynamics of seven two-person healthcare teams across time and brain regions during autonomous (taskwork) and collaborative (teamwork) segments of simulation training. The questions posed were: (1) whether these abstract and mostly integrated constructs could be separated neurodynamically; and, (2) what could be learned about taskwork and teamwork by trying to do so? The taskwork and teamwork frameworks used were Neurodynamic Information (NI), an electroencephalography (EEG) derived measure shown to be a neurodynamic proxy for the pauses and hesitations associated with individual uncertainty, and inter-brain EEG coherence (IBC) which is a required component of social interactions. No interdependency was observed between NI and IBC, and second-by-second dynamic comparisons suggested mutual exclusivity. These studies show that proxies for fundamental properties of teamwork and taskwork can be separated neurodynamically during team performances of ecologically valid tasks. The persistent expression of NI and IBC were not simultaneous suggesting that it may be difficult for team members to maintain inter-brain coherence while simultaneously reducing their individual uncertainties. Lastly, these separate dynamics occur over time frames of 15–30 s providing time for real-time detection and mitigation of individual and collaborative complications during training or live patient encounters.

Air Force Pilot Expertise Assessment with Regard to Mental Effort Requested during Unusual Attitude Recovery Flight Training Simulations

Pilot training and expertise are key aspects in aviation. A traditional way of evaluating pilot expertise is to measure performance output. However, this approach provides a narrow view of the pilot’s capacity, especially with regard to mental and emotional profile. The aim of this study is hence to investigate whether neurophysiological data can be employed as an additional objective measure to assess the expertise of pilots. In this regard, it has been demonstrated that mental effort can be used as an indirect measure of operator expertise and capacity. An increase in mental effort, for instance, can automatically result in a decrease in the remaining capacity of the operator. To better investigate this aspect, we ask two groups of Italian Air Force pilots, experienced (Experts) and unexperienced (Novices), to undergo unusual attitude recovery flight training simulations. Their behavioral (unusual attitude recovery time), subjective (mental effort demand perception) and neurophysiological data (Electroencephalogram, EEG; Electrocardiogram, ECG) are collected during the entire flight simulations. Although the two groups do not exhibit differences in terms of unusual attitude recovery time and mental effort demand perception, the EEG-based mental effort index shows how Novices request significantly higher mental effort during unusual conditions.

Parsing Neurodynamic Information Streams to Estimate the Frequency, Magnitude and Duration of Team Uncertainty

Neurodynamic organizations are information-based abstractions, expressed in bits, of the structure of long duration EEG amplitude levels. Neurodynamic information (NI, the variable of neurodynamic organization) is thought to continually accumulate as EEG amplitudes cycle through periods of persistent activation and deactivation in response to the activities and uncertainties of teamwork. Here we show that (1) Neurodynamic information levels were a better predictor of uncertainty and novice and expert behaviors than were the EEG power levels from which NI was derived. (2) Spatial and temporal parsing of team NI from experienced submarine navigation and healthcare teams showed that it was composed of discrete peaks with durations up to 20–60 s, and identified the involvement of activated delta waves when precise motor control was needed. (3) The relationship between NI and EEG power was complex varying by brain regions, EEG frequencies, and global vs. local brain interactions. The presence of an organizational system of information that parallels the amplitude of EEG rhythms is important as it provides a greatly reduced data dimension while retaining the essential system features, i.e., linkages to higher scale behaviors that span temporal and spatial scales of teamwork. In this way the combinatorial explosion of EEG rhythmic variables at micro levels become compressed into an intermediate system of information and organization which links to macro-scale team and team member behaviors. These studies provide an avenue for understanding how complex organizations arise from the dynamics of underlying micro-scale variables. The study also has practical implications for how micro-scale variables might be better represented, both conceptually and in terms of parsimony, for training machines to recognize human behaviors that span scales of teams.

Neural Correlates of Group Versus Individual Problem Solving Revealed by fMRI

Group problem solving is a prototypical complex collective intellectual activity. Psychological research provides compelling evidence that problem solving in groups is both qualitatively and quantitatively different from doing so alone. However, the question of whether individual and collective problem solving involve the same neural substrate has not yet been addressed, mainly due to methodological limitations. In the current study, functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed to compare brain activation when participants solved Raven-like matrix problems in a small group and individually. In the group condition, the participant in the scanner was able to discuss the problem with other team members using a special communication device. In the individual condition, the participant was required to think aloud while solving the problem in the silent presence of the other team members. Greater activation was found in several brain regions during group problem solving, including the medial prefrontal cortex; lateral parietal, cingulate, precuneus and retrosplenial cortices; frontal and temporal poles. These areas have been identified as potential components of the so-called "social brain" on the basis of research using offline judgments of material related to socializing. Therefore, this study demonstrated the actual involvement of these regions in real-time social interactions, such as group problem solving. However, further connectivity analysis revealed that the social brain components are co-activated, but do not increase their coupling during cooperation as would be suggested for a holistic network. We suggest that the social mode of the brain may be described instead as a re-configuration of connectivity between basic networks, and we found decreased connectivity between the language and salience networks in the group compared to the individual condition. A control experiment showed that the findings from the main experiment cannot be entirely accounted for by discourse comprehension. Thus, the study demonstrates affordances provided by the presented new technique for neuroimaging the "group mind," implementing the single-brain version of the second-person neuroscience approach.

Measuring Real-Time Team Cognition During Team Training

OBJECTIVE

A method for detecting real-time changes in team cognition in the form of significant communication reorganizations is described. We demonstrate the method in the context of scenario-based simulation training.

BACKGROUND

We present the dynamical view that individual- and team-level aspects of team cognition are temporally intertwined in a team's real-time response to challenging events. We suggest that this real-time response represents a fundamental team cognitive skill regarding the rapidity and appropriateness of the response, and methods and metrics are needed to track this skill.

METHOD

Communication data from medical teams (Study 1) and submarine crews (Study 2) were analyzed for significant communication reorganization in response to training events. Mutual information between team members informed post hoc filtering to identify which team members contributed to reorganization.

RESULTS

Significant communication reorganizations corresponding to challenging training events were detected for all teams. Less experienced teams tended to show delayed and sometimes ineffective responses that more experienced teams did not. Mutual information and post hoc filtering identified the individual-level inputs driving reorganization and potential mechanisms (e.g., leadership emergence, role restructuring) underlying reorganization.

CONCLUSION

The ability of teams to rapidly and effectively reorganize coordination patterns as the situation demands is a team cognitive skill that can be measured and tracked.

APPLICATION

Potential applications include team monitoring and assessment that would allow for visualization of a team's real-time response and provide individualized feedback based on team member's contributions to the team response.

Advancing Our Understandings of Healthcare Team Dynamics From the Simulation Room to the Operating Room: A Neurodynamic Perspective

The initial models of team and team member dynamics using biometric data in healthcare will likely come from simulations. But how confident are we that the simulation-derived high-resolution dynamics will reflect those of teams working with live patients? We have developed neurodynamic models of a neurosurgery team while they performed a peroneal nerve decompression surgery on a patient to approach this question. The models were constructed from EEG-derived measures that provided second-by-second estimates of the neurodynamic responses of the team and team members to task uncertainty. The anesthesiologist and two neurosurgeons developed peaks, often coordinated, of elevated neurodynamic organization during the patient preparation and surgery which were similar to those seen during simulation training, and which occurred near important episodes of the patient preparation and surgery. As the analyses moved down the neurodynamic hierarchy, and the simulation and live patient neurodynamics occurring during the intubation procedure were compared at progressively smaller time scales, differences emerged across scalp locations and EEG frequencies. The most significant was the pronounced suppression of gamma rhythms detected by the frontal scalp sensors during the live patient intubation which was absent in simulation trials of the intubation procedure. These results indicate that while profiles of the second-by-second neurodynamics of teams were similar in both the simulation and live patient environments, a deeper analysis revealed differences in the EEG frequencies and scalp locations of the signals responsible for those team dynamics. As measures of individual and team performance become more micro-scale and dynamic, and simulations become extended into virtual environments, these results argue for the need for parallel studies in live environments to validate the dynamics of cognition being observed.