Monitoring attention skills and psychophysiological correlates in a sample of Special Forces operators: a pilot study

Attention is one of the most complex and pervasive cognitive function. Informationselection,\r\nfocusing and concentration are indeed crucial skills that underlie other\r\ncognitive functions and continuously mediate the relationship between an individual\r\nand the environment. According to Posner and Petersen model, attention\r\ncomponents are supported by three main neural subsystems: the alerting network,\r\nwhich grounds on the noradrenergic activity of brainstem arousal systems along with\r\nright hemisphere structures mediating sustained vigilance; the orienting network,\r\ninvolved in directing attention focus and including posterior parietal structures,\r\nsuperior colliculus and pulvinar; and an executive network, mediating conscious\r\ncontrol and awareness and including medial prefrontal and cingulate cortices. The\r\nintegrated activity of such systems regulates behavioural and physiological responses\r\nto the environment and can be trained. The fine tuning of aforementioned attention\r\nskills and networks becomes particularly critical for people involved in cognitively\r\nand physically stressful or high-risk activities, such as military and security operators,\r\nas critical is the evaluation of their functioning. While selective and more complex\r\nattention skills may be easily assessed by well-known response times tests including\r\ndifferent stimuli and more or less effortful tasks, such practice is not part of standard\r\nmonitoring examinations. The present study, then, aims at investigating the potential\r\nof such measures for the assessment of psychophysical performance in military\r\noperators. Further, it aims at investigating the relationship between simple attention\r\nmeasures and psychophysiological alertness/stress responses during and outside\r\ntactical activities so to investigate their predictive value. 69 operators took part in\r\nan initial evaluation step, which included a series of standardized Response Times\r\n(RT) computerized tests tapping on focused and spatial attention skills and on inhibition\r\nand response control abilities. Preliminary findings interestingly highlighted\r\nthat military participants did not present the expectable decline of attention performances with age, but presented instead significant negative correlations between age\r\nand attention-related RT, i.e. older operators showed better performances. In addition,\r\na first series of single-case analyses highlighted positive associations between\r\nRT and specific subcomponents of heart rate variability indices, hinting at a link\r\nto sympathetic/parasympathetic regulation. We suggest that those findings may be\r\naccounted for by the role of continuous psychophysical training.