Institute of Flight Technology, Civil Aviation Flight Academy of China, Guanghan, Sichuan, China.
PLoS One. 2023 Jan 27;18(1):e0276957. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0276957. eCollection 2023.
The impact of occupations on brain structures has attracted considerable research interests in the last decade. The aim of this research is to find the effect of flight training on brain gray matter volume of pilots. The whole-brain structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) data collected from 26 pilots and 24 controls was analyzed using Voxel-based morphological analysis method (VBM) combined with T1 data to quantitatively detect the local gray matter of brain tissue and calculate the gray matter volume. The result shows that the pilot group has larger gray matter volume in the lingual gyrus and fusiform gyrus compared to the control group (P<0.05). Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between the gray matter volume and the number of flight hours (r = 0.426, P = 0.048) after studying the average gray matter volume value of the agglomerate of participants whose flight hours are between 0 and 1000 hours. The lingual gyrus and fusiform gyrus are involved in high-level visual processing, memory, multisensory integration and perception. The study has indicated the flight training could enlarge gray matter volume in the lingual gyrus and fusiform gyrus. During flying, pilots need to observe the instrumentation in the cockpit and fully interpret the readings, which may lead to the results.
过去十年，职业对大脑结构的影响引起了相当多的研究兴趣。本研究旨在探讨飞行训练对飞行员脑灰质体积的影响。使用基于体素的形态学分析方法（VBM）结合 T1 数据对 26 名飞行员和 24 名对照者的全脑结构磁共振成像（sMRI）数据进行了分析，以定量检测脑组织的局部灰质并计算灰质体积。结果表明，与对照组相比，飞行员组的舌回和梭状回的灰质体积更大（P<0.05）。此外，在研究飞行小时数在 0 到 1000 小时之间的参与者的集合的平均灰质体积值后，发现灰质体积与飞行小时数之间存在正相关（r = 0.426，P = 0.048）。舌回和梭状回参与高级视觉处理、记忆、多感觉整合和感知。该研究表明，飞行训练可以增加舌回和梭状回的灰质体积。在飞行过程中，飞行员需要观察驾驶舱中的仪表并充分解释读数，这可能导致了这一结果。
