Prefrontal cortex activation upon a demanding virtual hand-controlled task

A New Frontier for Neuroergonomics 

FIGURE 1 | Experimental setting for the execution of a virtual reality (VR) hand-controlled task (HCT).

We are happy to announce that the University of L’Aquila (Italy) research group utilized the 20-channel Oxymon in an important study for neuroergonomics (Carrieri M, Petracca A, Lancia S, Basso Moro S, Brigadoi S, Spezialetti M, Ferrari M, Placidi G and Quaresima V, 2016):

Prefrontal Cortex Activation Upon a Demanding Virtual Hand-Controlled Task: A New Frontier for Neuroergonomics. 

Neuroergonomics is an interdisciplinary area of research which involves the intersection of two disciplines: neuroscience and ergonomics.

The study investigated the prefrontal cortex during the execution of a novel virtual hand-controlled task. The hand movements were captured by a 3D hand-sensing device, the LEAP motion controller, a gesture-based control interface that could be used in virtual reality for tele-operated applications such as driving robots, rovers and other devices remotely in a critical environment. The results showed the bilateral involvement of a specific cortical region, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, in response to the hand-controlled task.