Fighter pilots’ brains are smarter

LONDON - Fighter pilots’ brains are smarter and more capable than those with no piloting experience, says a new research based on cognitive tests and scans.

The study, conducted by the University College London, compares the cognitive performance of a group of front-line Royal Air Force Tornado fighter pilots to a control group with a similar IQ but with no similar experience of flying aircraft.

Researchers found that fighter pilots have superior cognitive control, showing significantly greater accuracy on one of the cognitive tasks, despite being more sensitive to irrelevant, distracting information.

Senior study author Masud Husain of the college, said: “We were interested in the pilots because they’re often operating at the limits of human cognitive capability - they are an expert group making precision choices at high speed.”

Cognition refers to mental processes that involve thinking, knowing, remembering, judging and problem-solving, which encompass language, imagination, perception and planning.

All the participants completed two ‘cognitive control’ tasks which were used to investigate rapid decision making, reports the Journal of Neuroscience.

A type of MRI brain scan was then used to examine the structure of white matter connections between brain regions associated with cognitive control, according to the college statement.

The results of the first task showed that the expert pilots were more accurate than age-matched volunteers, with no significant difference in reaction time - so, the pilots were able to perform the task at the same speed but with significantly higher accuracy.

In the second task, there was no significant difference between the pilots and volunteers, which the authors say suggests that expertise in cognitive control may be highly specialised.