Effects of perceptual load related to flight task on auditory ERPs

To investigate the effects of perceptual load related to flight task on the auditory ERPs, 14 subjects participated in a flight simulation experiment, and were asked to perform the indicator-monitoring task based on different perceptual loads. Auditory probes were simultaneously sent binaurally through headphones under the oddball paradigm. Subjects were instructed to pay attention to the flight simulation task and ignore auditory probes. The auditory ERPs of mismatch negativity (MMN), N1 and P2 were recorded as the evaluation indexes of perceptual load. The results revealed that the frontal-central MMN was affected by perceptual load significantly. The MMN average amplitude was enhanced under the high perceptual load, reflecting an improvement of automation processing ability of task-irrelevant information. Furthermore, the MMN average amplitude was positively correlated with the accuracy rate of detecting abnormal information. The present study indicates that the frontal-central MMN is well sensitive to perceptual load, and it may offers effective electrophysiological reference for the perceptual load assessment in complex flight tasks. However, the results also show that the perceptual load has little effect on the auditory early components N1 and P2 as well as the temporal MMN, which manifest the complicated effects of auditory ERPs on measuring the perceptual load related to flight task to some extent.