Validation of vigilance decline capability in a simulated test environment: a preliminary step towards neuroadaptive control

Sustaining attention is crucial in tasks like piloting and driving, significantly impacting cognitive performance and driving safety. Addressing the issue of diminishing vigilance, it becomes imperative to develop advanced systems, including neuroadaptive technologies aiming to detect and facilitate adaptive control of vigilance states. In pursuit of this aim, the current study recruited 32 participants (21 males, 11 females) to monitor their vigilance decline during a 60-minute simulated driving task in a monotonous environment. We used the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS), Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS), Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), along with neurophysiological specialized equipment: Enobio 8 electroencephalogram (EEG), Empatica E4, Polar H10 and Tobii Nano Pro eye tracker. Participants self-reported their loss of vigilance by pressing a marker on the steering wheel. In this study, we report the results to assess the experimental setup capacity in inducing lack of vigilance. We found that the mean KSS score significantly increased, from “fairly alert” to “some signs of sleepiness”, and the SSS increased from “being able to concentrate” up to “a somewhat foggy state”. Results from the PVT showed a significant increase in the mean reaction time as well. Participants self-reported their initial lack of vigilance within the first 18 minutes of the experiment. The study’s outcomes emphasize a consistent decline in vigilance with increased subjective sleepiness score and reaction time response post-driving. In conclusion, the study confirmed the effectiveness and validity of the simulated testbed in inducing vigilance decline and set the stage for exploring neuroadaptive control strategies to enhance task performance and safety.