neuroergonomics

Neuroergonomics is an interdisciplinary field that studies the brain in everyday work and user interactions to improve performance, safety, and well-being. It combines principles from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and ergonomics to understand how neural processes support perception, attention, memory, decision making, and action in complex environments, and how system design can align with those processes.

The term was popularized in the early 2000s by researchers such as Parasuraman and colleagues who proposed neuroergonomics as a framework for studying brain function in real-world tasks. Unlike traditional laboratory cognitive neuroscience, neuroergonomics emphasizes studying neural activity in naturalistic settings and integrating brain data with behavioral measures and system design.

Methods include noninvasive neuroimaging and electrophysiology such as EEG, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), fMRI in ecologically valid tasks, eye tracking, pupillometry, and autonomic measures. Data are used to assess mental workload, fatigue, vigilance, workload transitions, and attentional resources, often with real-time or near-real-time analysis for adaptive interfaces.

Applications span transportation (driving, aviation), industrial and process control, healthcare, HCI and simulation, and military contexts. Examples include designing cockpit layouts that reduce cognitive load, adaptive user interfaces that respond to workload, and safety protocols that account for fatigue and distraction.

Challenges include ensuring ecological validity, managing noise and individual differences, protecting privacy, and translating neural measures into actionable design guidelines. The field is moving toward real-time monitoring, adaptive systems, and integration with brain-computer interfaces, while maintaining ethical standards.