Alan Pope, a scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center, discovered how neurofeedback could improve pilot’s attention and engagement to tasks. Dr. Pope’s goal was to calculate what degree of automation on flight decks was most beneficial to pilots.
When a pilot’s systems are automated this tends to disengage the user. “Our purpose was to figure out when automation goes too far, based on brainwave activity,” stated Dr. Pope. He discovered how to do this by using a physiologically-adaptive simulator system that was developed in NASA flight deck research. With this system, brainwaves controlled the level of automation in a simulator flight deck. This “closed-loop” testing setup was used to determine what level of automation kept pilots engaged best in the flight task.
Just as neurofeedback trained the pilot’s brains to remain engaged via operant condition, we can now do the same for your brain for many other mental disorders such as ADD, ADHD, anxiety, and depression.
