Neural signatures of vigilance decrements predict behavioural errors before they occur.

Hamid Karimi-Rouzbahani,Anina N Rich,Alexandra Woolgar

doi:10.7554/elife.60563

Hamid Karimi-Rouzbahani, Anina N Rich + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.60563

Copy DOI

Abstract

There are many monitoring environments, such as railway control, in which lapses of attention can have tragic consequences. Problematically, sustained monitoring for rare targets is difficult, with more misses and longer reaction times over time. What changes in the brain underpin these 'vigilance decrements'? We designed a multiple-object monitoring (MOM) paradigm to examine how the neural representation of information varied with target frequency and time performing the task. Behavioural performance decreased over time for the rare target (monitoring) condition, but not for a frequent target (active) condition. This was mirrored in neural decoding using magnetoencephalography: coding of critical information declined more during monitoring versus active conditions along the experiment. We developed new analyses that can predict behavioural errors from the neural data more than a second before they occurred. This facilitates pre-empting behavioural errors due to lapses in attention and provides new insight into the neural correlates of vigilance decrements.

Highlights

When people monitor displays for rare targets, they are slower to respond and more likely to miss those targets relative to frequent target conditions (Wolfe et al, 2005; Warm et al, 2008; Rich et al, 2008; Reason, 1990; Reason, 2000)
Participants completed the multiple-object monitoring (MOM) task during which they monitored several dots moving on visible trajectories towards a centrally presented fixed object (Figure 1A)
To find the optimal threshold for each participant, we evaluated the thresholds used for all other participants except for a single testing participant for whom we used the average of the best thresholds that led to highest prediction accuracy for other participants

Summary

Introduction

When people monitor displays for rare targets, they are slower to respond and more likely to miss those targets relative to frequent target conditions (Wolfe et al, 2005; Warm et al, 2008; Rich et al, 2008; Reason, 1990; Reason, 2000). ‘mind wandering’ theories suggest that the boredom of the task tends to result in insufficient involvement of cognitive resources, which in turn leads to performance decrements (Manly et al, 1999; Smallwood and Schooler, 2006; Young and Stanton, 2002). With the move towards automated and semi-automated systems in many high-risk domains (e.g., power-generation and trains), humans commonly need to monitor systems for infrequent computer failures or errors These modern environments challenge our attentional systems and make it urgent to understand the way in which monitoring conditions change the way important information about the task is encoded in the human brain

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion