Fighter pilots are responsible for carrying out missions to defend Brazilian airspace. To perform this role, in addition to technical training, it is necessary to have focus and a lot of attention. One way to improve these skills is through an electroencephalogram (EEG) exam and brain training with neuro.
Those responsible for carrying out this technique with pilots from the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA) are the neuroscientist and neuro specialist, Dr. Emily Pires, and the engineer, Prof. Faria Pires, from the Brain Training Center of São José dos Campos, 'BrainEstar'.
According to Emily Pires, the pilots' assessment is carried out in a simulated adverse flight situation with different degrees of difficulty. "In this simulation, the pilot is assessed in real time using EEG, also known as 'brain mapping', which is a non-invasive exam that records and analyzes the brain's electrical activity," she said. According to her, the analysis of human factors in aviation is essential to measure the maximum workload that a pilot can handle while maintaining flight safety.
“EEG offers a valuable tool for measuring the stress load, as well as the operational limit of each pilot, and this is what we are doing at ITA, working on metrics to determine the cognitive and motor effort of pilots,” he comments.
BrainEstar engineer and technical director, Professor Faria Pires, explains that neuro, a tool used to regulate brain functions, and EEG are techniques that NASA has used since the 80s. “These techniques are already part of NASA’s routine, given that monitoring all of the crew ’ organic activity is crucial to ensuring safety and the astronomical investments already made in the space program. What we are doing at ITA is an initiative, to a certain extent pioneering, to introduce quantitative measurement systems to assess human effort and workload on pilots,” he explains.
In addition to being an engineer, Faria Pires is also a fighter pilot in the Brazilian Air Force and a professor at ITA. “For us at BrainEstar, it is a great honor to be able to participate in this project and to be able to collaborate at the beginning of a journey that can lead to efficient means of evaluating and training crew in both civil and military aviation,” he says.
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