The comprehensive effect of sleep deprivation on biological and behavioral functions largely remains unknown. There is evidence to support that human sleep must be of sufficient duration and physiological continuity to ensure neurocognitive performance while we are waking. Insufficient sleep would lead to high risk of human-error related to accidents, injuries or even fatal outcomes. However, in modern society, more and more people suffer from sleep deprivation because of the increasing social, academic or occupational demand. It is important to study the effect of sleep deprivation, not only on task performance, but also on neurocognitive functions. Recent research that has explored brain effective connectivity has demonstrated the directed inference interaction among pairs of brain areas, which may bring important insight to understand how brain works to support neurocognitive function. This research aimed to identify the brain effective connectivity pattern associated with changes of a task performance, response time, following sleep deprivation. Experiments were conducted by colleagues at Neuroergonomics Department at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. Ten healthy young women, with an average age of 23-year-old, performed visual spatial sustained-attention tasks under two conditions: (1) the rest-wakeful (RW) condition, where participants had their usual sleep and (2) the sleep-deprived (SD) condition, where participants had 3 hours less sleep than their usual sleep, for 7 nights (amounting to 21 h of sleep debt). Measures included eye tracking performance and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In each condition, each subject*s eye-position was monitored through 13 sessions, each with 46 trials, while fMRI data was recorded. There were two task performance measures, accuracy and response time. Accuracy measured the proportion of correct responses of all trials in each session. Response time measured the average amount of milliseconds until participants gazed at the target stimuli in each session. An experimental session could be treated as a short window. By splitting long trials of fMRI data into consecutive windows, Granger causality was applied based on short trials of fMRI data. This procedure helped to calculate pairwise causal influences with respect to time-varying property in brain causal interaction. Causal influence results were then averaged across sessions to create one matrix for each participant. This matrix was averaged within each condition to formulate a model of brain effective connectivity, which also served as a basis of comparison. In conclusion, significant effect of sleep deprivation was found on response time and brain effective connectivity. In addition, the change of brain effective connectivity after sleep deprivation was linked to the change of response time. First, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed significant difference for response time between the RW condition and the SD condition. No significant changes for accuracy were found. A paired t-test showed that response time was significantly shorter in sleep deprivation for the visual spatial sustained-attention task. Second, Granger causality analysis demonstrated a reduction of bidirectional connectivity and an increase of directed influences from low-level brain areas to high-level brain areas after sleep deprivation. This observation suggested that sleep deprivation provoked the effective connectivity engaged in salient stimuli processing, but inhibited the effective connectivity in biasing selection of attention on task and in maintaining self-awareness in day time. Furthermore, in the SD condition, attention at the visual spatial task seemed to be driven by a bottom-up modulation mechanism. Third, a relationship was found between brain effective connectivity with response time. Decreases of Granger causal influences in two directions, from medial frontal lobe to sub cortical gray nuclei and from medial parietal lobe to sub cortical gray nuclei, were associated with shorter response time in the SD condition. Additionally, an increase of Granger causal influence from medial parietal lobe to cerebellum was associated with longer response time in the SD condition.

No description available.

L’état attentionnel de l’opérateur est un des précurseurs de l’erreur humaine dans les systèmes complexes. Cela est particulièrement vrai en aéronautique, où la sécurité dépend en premier lieu de la capacité à réagir rapidement et correctement. Les niveaux de complexité associés à la gestion de tels systèmes aboutissent à des niveaux de charge mentale et d’engagement de l’opérateur en constante variation, qui peuvent être prédicteurs de sa performance. Ce projet de recherche adopte une démarche de Neuroergonomie, et vise à estimer l’état attentionnel en conditions écologiques par l’utilisation de mesures cérébrales. Nous avons tout d’abord étudié le comportement de l’opérateur soumis à des niveaux de demande extrêmes à l’aide de mesures cérébrales et psycho-physiologiques. Les résultats de ces études nous ont conduits au développement d’un nouveau cadre théorique centré sur l’engagement de l’opérateur pour estimer son état attentionnel. De plus, nous avons étudié différentes techniques de traitement du signal de manière à rendre possible l’utilisation des mesures cérébrales en temps réel en situation écologique, en vue du développement d’interfaces cerveau-machine pour assister l’opérateur. / The attentional state of operators is one of the main reasons for errors during human control of complex systems, and controlling these errors is critical especially in aeronautics, where errors are directly linked to safety and lives might be at stake. In particular, excessively high or low task demands encountered during the operation of such systems result in varying levels of mental workload and engagement which are linked with the operator performance. This research project adopts a Neuroergonomics approach and investigates the use of brain measurement techniques to monitor the attentional state of the operator under ecological conditions. We studied the behavior of the operator under both excessively low and high task demands with the use of multiple physiological and neurophysiological measurement techniques. Our results show that it is possible to use such techniques to characterize the attentional state. We then analyze the potential of real time application for such techniques. We investigated signal processing and analysis tools to improve the real-time usability of brain signals in ecological conditions, and proposed solutions towards the development of brain computer interfaces for assisting the human operator.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-09-21T13:00:49Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação Rafaela Queiroz 01.06.16.docx..pdf: 38785641 bytes, checksum: 6a42f06574706d4681fe6f9dadc8b8ec (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-21T13:00:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação Rafaela Queiroz 01.06.16.docx..pdf: 38785641 bytes, checksum: 6a42f06574706d4681fe6f9dadc8b8ec (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-01-29 / A embalagem é a interface mais utilizada no cotidiano das pessoas. No entanto, muitas delas apresentam problemas de usabilidade e segurança fazendo com que o seu design proporcione ao usuário falta de segurança, conforto, eficiência e satisfação estética. Particularmente, a dificuldade na abertura da embalagem pode provocar desperdício e até a inutilização do produto. Os estudos relacionados a mensuração da satisfação do usuário de embalagens PET de refrigerante ainda são escassos, principalmente quando relacionados ao desempenho real do usuário no momento da abertura das tampas roscadas. Embora existam técnicas de usabilidade que avaliam a experiência do usuário através do processo de concepção e avaliação de produtos de consumo, nem sempre o pesquisador tem o conhecimento de fato se a experiência relatada pelo usuário no momento da pesquisa condiz plenamente com a experiência real sentida pelo usuário. Este estudo realizou uma avaliação de usabilidade de uma amostra de usuários durante a manipulação manual de embalagens PET de refrigerante através da comparação entre a experiência relatada pelo usuário e a experiência real sentida mensuradas através das técnicas de análise de usabilidade, rastreamento ocular, eletroencefalografia e termografia. No estudo de usabilidade foi solicitado aos voluntários que abrissem duas garrafas PET de refrigerantes e preenchessem um questionário de avaliação de usabilidade para relatar o nível de satisfação no manuseio do produto. Este experimento obteve a experiência relatada pelos usuários a ser comparada com as demais ferramentas que visavam obter a experiência sentida pelos usuários. O rastreamento ocular objetivou analisar o foco de atenção visual dos voluntários para identificar qual seria a sua embalagem preferida numa amostra de duas garrafas PET e se este resultado seria compatível com os obtidos nos demais experimentos. Com o auxílio da Neuroergonomia, a ferramenta de EEG foi aplicada no estudo das atividades elétricas do cérebro dos voluntários durante o tempo da apresentação das garrafas PET associada ao comando de fixar o olhar para a garrafa que o voluntário gostou e não gostou. Foi utilizado o software sLORETA para a análise dos dados. A termografia objetivou a captação de imagens de calor irradiado de partes do corpo dos voluntários para associá- las a eventuais excitações emocionais durante o manuseio do produto. Os resultados demonstraram que da mesma forma que é possível analisar a experiência relatada pelos usuários através da usabilidade, é possível analisar a experiência sentida através das técnicas de rastreamento ocular, EEG e termografia. Também foir comprovado que estas ferramentas demonstraram ser eficazes para mensurar a satisfação (experiência sentida) dos usuários no manuseio de produtos de consumo. / Packaging is the most widely used interface in daily life. However, many of them have problems of usability and safety causing the design provides the user with lack of safety, comfort, efficiency and aesthetic satisfaction. Particularly, the difficulty in opening the package may lead to waste and destruction of the product. Studies related to measurement of PET packaging user satisfaction soda are still scarce, especially when related to the actual performance of the user at the opening of the screw caps. Although there are usability techniques that evaluate the user experience through the process of design and evaluation of consumer products, not always the researcher has the knowledge if the experience reported by the user at time of search matches fully with the actual experience felt by user. This study conducted a usability evaluation of a sample of users during manual handling of soda PET packaging by comparing the user-reported experience and the actual experience felt measured through usability analysis techniques, eye tracking, electroencephalograph and thermography. In the study of usability were asked to volunteer that opened two PET soft drink bottles and complete a usability evaluation questionnaire to report their level of satisfaction in product handling. This experiment got the experience reported by users to be compared with other tools aimed at getting the experience felt by users. The eye-tracking aimed to analyze the focus of visual attention of volunteers to identify what would be your preferred packaging a sample of two bottles PET and this outcome would be consistent with those obtained in other experiments. Supported by Neuroergonomics, EEG was applied in the study of the electrical activity of the brain of the volunteers during the PET bottles of presentation time associated with the command to set the look for the bottle that voluntary liked and disliked. The software sLORETA was used for data analysis. Thermography aimed to capture images from the volunteers radiated heat body parts to associate them with any emotional excitement while handling the product. The results showed that in the same way that you can analyze the experience reported by users through the usability, you can analyze the experience felt through the eye-tracking techniques, EEG and thermography. Also proved that these tools have proven to be effective to measure users’ satisfaction (felt experience) in handling consumer products.

L'analyse des accidents aériens fait ressortir ces dernières années le rôle crucial desopérateurs humains, et leurs erreurs qui peuvent avoir des conséquences dramatiques. Uncas particulier d’erreur humaine reste cependant peu abordé : la surdité inattentionnelle,c’est-à-dire l’incapacité temporaire à entendre, à prendre conscience d’une informationauditive. Dans le domaine de l’aéronautique, cette défaillance cognitive est évidementcritique, car elle signifie l’omission d’alarmes auditives. Le premier enjeu de ce projet derecherche est de définir des métriques comportementales et physiologiquescaractéristiques de la surdité inattentionnelle. Pour cela, nous nous sommes intéressés enparticulier à deux postes de travail fondamentaux de la sécurité aérienne et soumis à desalarmes auditives : le pilotage et le contrôle aérien. Nous avons cherché à mettre enévidence les conditions contextuelles favorisant l’apparition de la surdité inattentionnelle,notamment la charge de travail des opérateurs. Un second enjeu était d’identifier despistes d’adaptation des interfaces avec les pilotes et les contrôleurs aériens, permettant deprévenir ou limiter la surdité inattentionnelle à ces postes spécifiques. Pour répondre àcette problématique, 3 expériences ont été menées. La première a étudié l’impact de lacharge de travail sur le traitement des alarmes auditives lors d’une tâche d’atterrissage.Elle a permis de déterminer que la P300 était un indicateur de la surdité. La secondeexpérimentation a porté sur l’impact du design des alarmes visuelles sur les capacités detraitement cognitif des alarmes auditives, dans le cadre du contrôle aérien. Les résultatsnous ont montré une restauration de la P3b auditive avec le design visuel amélioré. Enfinla dernière expérience a testé la pertinence de mesures oculaires pour détecter lescontextes favorisant la surdité inattentionnelle. Ces résultats ouvrent des pistesprometteuses de prévention et de détection de la surdité inattentionnelle aux postescritiques de la sécurité aérienne. / The analysis of airplane accidents has recently highlighted the crucial role of humanoperators, their mistakes having potential dramatic consequences. A specific type ofhuman error remains little discussed: inattentional deafness, which is defined as thetemporary inability to hear or to become aware of auditory information. In aeronautics,this cognitive failure is obviously critical because it can lead to the omission of auditoryalarms. The first challenge of this research project is to define behavioral and physiologicalcharacteristics of inattentional deafness. For this purpose, we focused on the twofundamental jobs in aviation safety and subjected to auditory alarms: piloting and airtraffic control. We planned to highlight the contextual conditions favoring the appearanceof inattentional deafness, in particular the operators' workload. A second challenge was toidentify potential adaptation in the interfaces with pilots and air traffic controllers toprevent or limit the apparition inattentional deafness. To address these issues, threeexperiments were conducted. The first experiment studied the impact of workload on thetreatment of auditory alarms during a landing task. It was determined that P3b was anindicator of deafness. The second experiment focused on the impact of design visualalarms on cognitive processing abilities auditory alarms, as part of air traffic control. Theresults showed a restoration of auditory P300 with the enhanced visual design us. Finally,the last experiment tested the relevance of eye measurements to detect contexts favoringinattentional deafness. These results open promising possibilities for prevention anddetection of inattentional deafness in critical positions of aviation safety.

Le contrôle aérien rentre dans une phase de profondes mutations liées à l’augmentation du trafic età l’évolution des outils permettant d’assurer le service. L’augmentation du nombre d’avions gérés parle contrôleur implique un nombre beaucoup plus important qu’auparavant d’informations à traiter etmémoriser ; or une part importante des causes d’incidents est déjà due à des problèmes de perception et demémorisation des informations amplifiées par la taille des écrans de contrôle. Ceux-ci sont particulièrementcritiques dans le cas de la perception des alarmes et des avertissements donnés par le système surla visualisation radar. Le design actuel de ce type d’alertes en France qui n’utilise que la couleur, faitaujourd’hui débat et il a été recommandé dans un bulletin de sécurité aérienne de le faire évoluer. Laperception des informations nécessaires à l’établissement d’une bonne conscience de la situation aériennedes contrôleurs est au centre de cette thèse. L’objet principal de ce travail est d’améliorer la conscience dela situation des contrôleurs en s’assurant que les éléments pertinents à leur disposition dont les alarmessont perçus dans des délais conformes à leur importance et que les actions nécessaires qui en découlentsont bien réalisées. Pour répondre à cette problématique, notre travail s’est porté sur deux axes. Le premierconsiste à étudier la tâche des contrôleurs de façon à analyser les informations nécessaires à la réalisationde certains objectifs et proposer un agent de suivi de la tâche qui pourrait les épauler. Le second porte surla perception des notifications, plus particulièrement en vision périphérique, et la conception de designspropres à améliorer leur perception ainsi que l’étude de leur impact sur la réalisation de la tâche. Grâceà une approche holistique basée sur l’utilisation d’un micro-monde ATC (Laby) et l’utilisation de capteursphysiologiques, nous avons pu évaluer plusieurs designs de notifications. Deux expérimentations ont étéconduites, la première utilisant de l’oculométrie, visait à mesurer le pouvoir attentionnel de cinq designs etleur impact sur la réalisation de la tâche. La seconde, en utilisant des données neurophysiologiques, visaità mesurer l’impact de deux designs sur la charge de travail. Les designs évalués ont servi à concevoir unsystème de notification intégré dans une nouvelle supervision radar qui a été couplé à l’agent de suivi dela tâche. La dernière expérimentation conduite durant ces travaux avait pour objectif d’évaluer l’impact decette nouvelle position de contrôle dont le design est orienté conscience de la situation sur la détection deproblèmes critiques. Les résultats obtenus montrent l’intérêt de ces nouveaux outils et leur impact positifsur la réalisation de la tâche des contrôleurs ainsi que la nécessité d’évaluer dans un contexte expérimentalcontrôlé les caractéristiques des designs de notifications pour les visualisations de supervision. / Air traffic control is undergoing a great change due to the increase of traffic and the evolution of thecontrol tools. The greater number of aircrafts managed by the controller implies a much greater load ofinformation to deal with and memorize than before. A significant part of accidents’ causes is already dueto the problem of information perception and memorization which is worsened by the size of the controlscreens which are particularly critical concerning the perception of alarms and warnings displayed onthe radar image. The current design in France of those types of alerts which rely on color is controversialand an Aviation Safety bulletin recommended it should be improved. The perception of informationcontributing to a satisfactory situation awareness by the air traffic controllers is central to this thesis whichaims at making sure alarms and relevant information are detected early enough and according to prioritiesand that the corresponding actions are actually performed. To answer the issue at stake our first work focusdealt with the study of the controllers’ task so as to analyze the required information in order to achievecertain objectives and provide a task monitoring agent that could support them. The second work focusdealt with the notifications perception, more specifically in the peripheral vision and the conception ofdesigns such as to improve their perception and the study of their impact on the performance of the task.Thanks to a holistic approach based on the use of an ATC microworld (Laby) and the use of physiologicalsensors we managed to assess several notification designs. Several experiments have been conducted,one using eye-tracking aimed at measuring attention capacity of five designs and their impact on theperformance of the task. The second used neurophysiologic data and aimed at measuring the impact oftwo designs on the work load. The assessed designs enabled to conceive a notification system integratedin a new radar supervision together with the task monitoring agent. The last experiment conducted in thecourse of this work aimed at measuring the impact of this new position of control whose design is situationawareness oriented, on the detection of critical problems. The obtained results show the relevance ofthese new tools and their positive impact on the performance of the task by controllers as well as the needto assess, in a controlled experimental context, the characteristics of notification designs for supervisionvisualization.

Notre comportement au quotidien nécessite la prise en compte d'informations et l'élaboration d'actions qui peuvent nous paraître banales. Il est cependant le fruit d'un traitement élaboré et complexe de la part de notre cerveau. Ce traitement cérébral est à la base des fonctions cognitives et motrices chez l'homme. Si nous voulions enregistrer in situ l'évolution temporelle des signaux cérébraux traduisant notre comportement lors de tâches cognitives et/ou sensori-motrices, nos choix se porteraient sur l'utilisation de méthodes non-invasives utilisées en neuroergonomie. Parmi les méthodes actuellement disponibles en neuroimagerie fonctionnelle, la spectroscopie proche infrarouge (NIRS) quantifiant indirectement l'activité corticale (i.e., modification de la réponse hémodynamique) apparaît la plus pertinente quant à l'appréciation de l'activité corticale en continu. Dans cette thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés, en exploitant la NIRS, à mettre en évidence les corrélats entre l'activité corticale (lobe frontal) et le niveau de sollicitation engendré par des charges de travail dans des tâches cognitives et/ou motrices à des intensités sous-maximales et de difficultés variables. Trois études ont été menées, dont les résultats montrent que l'activité hémodynamique mesurée par NIRS varie en fonction de la charge de travail. L'activité corticale est estimable à une intensité d'effort sous-maximale pour des tâches cognitives et/ou motrices, à condition que l'analyse des signaux soit suffisamment discriminante pour des sollicitations faibles à modérées. Ce travail a révélé la sensibilité et l'utilité de la NIRS dans l'exploration de la charge de travail. / Daily behavior requires taking into account some information and actions planning which may seem trivial for us. However, it is the fruit of a complex and sophisticated processing from the brain. The cerebral processes underlie cognitive and motor functions in humans. In order to record in situ the temporal evolution of cerebral signals reflecting our behavior during cognitive and/or sensorimotor tasks, different non-invasive methods from Neuroergonomics could be used. Among the available functional neuroimaging methods, the near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) allowing indirectly to measure cortical activity (ie, changes in hemodynamic response) appears relevant to appreciate continuously cortical activity.In this thesis, using NIRS, we were interested in highlighting the correlates between cortical activity (frontal lobe) and the level of stimulation induced by workload during cognitive and/or motor tasks at sub-maximal efforts and variable difficulties. Three studies were conducted. The results indicate that the hemodynamic activity changes by NIRS depend on the workload. The cortical activity is measurable at a sub-maximal intensity for cognitive and/or motor tasks, as long as the signal analysis can discriminate low to moderate loads. This work has revealed the sensitivity and usefulness of NIRS in workload application.