Fighter pilots' brains are more sensitive
16 December 2010
The researchers used cognitive tests to show that fighter pilots have superior cognitive control compared to age-matched members of the public. When the researchers looked at the structure of their brains with MRI scans, they also found differences in the microstructure of white matter in the right hemisphere of the brain. However, the tests also revealed that fighter pilots - despite exhibiting superior cognitive control - were more sensitive to irrelevant, distracting information.
The study, published today in the 'Journal of Neuroscience', compares the cognitive performance of 11 front-line Tornado fighter pilots from the Royal Air Force with a control group of a similar IQ with no previous experience of piloting aircraft.
All the participants completed two 'cognitive control' tasks, which were used to investigate rapid decision making. Diffusion tensor imaging, a type of MRI brain scan, was then used to examine the structure of white matter connections between brain regions associated with cognitive control.
Lead researcher Professor Masud Husain from the UCL Institute of Neurology and the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience explains: "We were interested in the pilots because they're often operating at the limits of human cognitive capability - they are an expert group making precision choices at high speed.
"Our findings show that optimal cognitive control may surprisingly be mediated by enhanced responses to both relevant and irrelevant stimuli, and that such control is accompanied by structural alterations in the brain.
"This has implications beyond simple distinctions between fighter pilots and the rest of us because it suggests expertise in certain aspects of cognition are associated with changes in the connections between brain areas. So, it's not just that the relevant areas of the brain are larger - but that the connections between key areas are different. Whether people are born with these differences or develop them is currently not known."
The study tasks were designed to assess the influence of distracting information and the ability to update a response plan in the presence of conflicting visual information. In the first task, participants had to press a right or left arrow key in response to the direction of an arrow on a screen in front of them, which was flanked by other distracting arrows pointing in different directions. In the second task, they had to respond as quickly as possible to a 'go' signal, unless they were instructed to change their plan before they had even made a response.
The results of the first task showed that the expert pilots were more accurate than age-matched volunteers, with no significant difference in reaction time - so, the pilots were able to perform the task at the same speed but with significantly higher accuracy. In the second task, there was no significant difference between the pilots and volunteers, which the authors say suggests that expertise in cognitive control may be tuned to specific tasks and not simply associated with overall enhanced performance.
Overall the findings suggest that, in humans, some types of expert cognitive control may be linked to a heightened response to both relevant and irrelevant stimuli. This is accompanied by structural alterations, or 're-wiring', in the white matter of the brain.
The research was supported by funding from the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and the NIHR Specialist Biomedical Centre at UCL/UCLH.
Image credit: C McDonnell, 2005.
Reference
Roberts RE et al. Expert cognitive control and individual differences associated with frontal and parietal white matter microstructure. J Neurosci 2010;30(50):17063-67.
