# Analysis of P300 Evoked Potentials to Determine Pilot Cognitive States

## TL;DR

This study uses brainwave measurements to track how military pilots' attention and mental workload change during complex flight simulations.

## Contribution

The study demonstrates the P300 signal's effectiveness in measuring cognitive workload in realistic aviation scenarios.

## Key findings

- P300 amplitude decreased over time, suggesting reduced attentional engagement due to task habituation.
- P300 latency for correct responses decreased, indicating improved cognitive efficiency with repeated exposure.
- Incorrect responses did not provide clear results due to limited trials.

## Abstract

The P300 evoked potential, recorded via electroencephalography, serves as a relevant marker of attentional allocation and cognitive workload. This work extracts and analyzes event-related potentials that reflect variations in the cognitive state of military pilots during a complex simulated flight scenario coupled with simultaneous mental arithmetic tasks. The experiment was conducted at the Academia General del Aire (Spain) with 14 military pilots using a high-fidelity flight simulator. The experimental protocol involved dynamic flight instructions combined with arithmetic tasks designed to elicit varying cognitive loads. The results revealed a significant decrease in P300 amplitude across successive sessions, indicating a progressive reduction in attentional engagement due to task habituation and increased cognitive automaticity. Concurrently, P300 latency for correct responses decreased significantly, demonstrating enhanced efficiency in cognitive stimulus evaluation over repeated exposure. However, incorrect responses failed to yield robust results due to an insufficient number of trials. These findings validate the use of P300 as an objective indicator of cognitive workload variations in realistic aviation contexts.