Abstract
BackgroundAttrition of students from aviation training is a serious financial and operational concern for the U.S. Navy. Each late stage navy aviator training failure costs the taxpayer over $1,000,000 and ultimately results in decreased operational readiness of the fleet. Currently, potential aviators are selected based on the Aviation Selection Test Battery (ASTB), which is a series of multiple-choice tests that evaluate basic and aviation-related knowledge and ability. However, the ASTB does not evaluate a person's response to stress. This is important because operating sophisticated aircraft demands exceptional performance and causes high psychological stress. Some people are more resistant to this type of stress, and consequently better able to cope with the demands of naval aviation, than others.Methodology/Principal FindingsAlthough many psychological studies have examined psychological stress resistance none have taken advantage of the human genome sequence. Here we use high-throughput -omic biology methods and a novel statistical data normalization method to identify plasma proteins associated with human performance under psychological stress. We identified proteins involved in four basic physiological processes: innate immunity, cardiac function, coagulation and plasma lipid physiology.Conclusions/SignificanceThe proteins identified here further elucidate the physiological response to psychological stress and suggest a hypothesis that stress-susceptible pilots may be more prone to shock. This work also provides potential biomarkers for screening humans for capability of superior performance under stress.
Highlights
Attrition of trainees from the aviation program is a continuing concern for the U.S Navy
What is clear is that a significant proportion of proteins across the range of concentrations present in blood plasma will not change under specific conditions and that these can be used for accurate normalization that will take account of differences in variation that are dependent on quantity of a protein in a sample
Coagulation We found several members of the intrinsic coagulation pathway to be increased in low and median-scoring performers compared to high-scoring performers (Figure S3)
Summary
Attrition of trainees from the aviation program is a continuing concern for the U.S Navy. Most attritions result from academic or flight performance failures or requests to be dropped from the program (DoR; drop on request). While there is no measure of the impact of psychological stress on attrition from the program, it makes a clear contribution to academic/flight performance failures and DoR. Biological screening of potential aviators based on performance under psychological stress could reduce all of the major contributing factors of attrition saving the Navy millions of dollars. Attrition of students from aviation training is a serious financial and operational concern for the U.S Navy. Each late stage navy aviator training failure costs the taxpayer over $1,000,000 and results in decreased operational readiness of the fleet. The ASTB does not evaluate a person’s response to stress This is important because operating sophisticated aircraft demands exceptional performance and causes high psychological stress. Some people are more resistant to this type of stress, and better able to cope with the demands of naval aviation, than others
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