The mission of the Applied Neuroscience Branch is to apply understanding derived from neuroscience to support performance and decision-making in distributed environments to include air, space, cyber, and cross-domain. Technical challenges of this research area include (1) establishing an empirical and theoretical foundation for determining individual and team states from physiological and behavioral indices, (2) identification of reliable and robust indices of operator state before impairments are evidenced in performance, (3) identification of appropriate mitigation strategies for potential performance impairments when they are detected, and (4) implementation of (near-) real-time closed-loop solutions derived from the integration of solutions to challenges 1-3. Current research in the Applied Neuroscience Branch focuses on developing behaviorally- and neurophysiologically-based measures of individual and team functional states; and innovating novel indicators of changes in workload, stress, trust, vigilance, and situation awareness. These measures will be applied in research projects such as adaptive automation and human-machine teaming.

 

Keywords:

Applied neuroscience; Neuroergonomics; Human factors; Psychophysiology; Human performance; Decision making; Mental workload; Situation awareness; Trust;

Citizenship:  Open to U.S. citizens

Level:  Open to Postdoctoral and Senior applicants