Exploring how healthcare teams balance the neurodynamics of autonomous and collaborative behaviors: a proof of concept.

Team members co-regulate their activities and move together at the collective level of behavior while coordinating their actions toward shared goals. In parallel with team processes, team members need to resolve uncertainties arising from the changing task and environment. In this exploratory study we have measured the differential neurodynamics of seven two-person healthcare teams across time and brain regions during autonomous (taskwork) and collaborative (teamwork) segments of simulation training.

Parsing Neurodynamic Information Streams to Estimate the Frequency, Magnitude and Duration of Team Uncertainty.

Neurodynamic organizations are information-based abstractions, expressed in bits, of the structure of long duration EEG amplitude levels. Neurodynamic information (, the variable of neurodynamic organization) is thought to continually accumulate as EEG amplitudes cycle through periods of persistent activation and deactivation in response to the activities and uncertainties of teamwork. Here we show that (1) Neurodynamic information levels were a better predictor of uncertainty and novice and expert behaviors than were the EEG power levels from which was derived.

Advancing Our Understandings of Healthcare Team Dynamics From the Simulation Room to the Operating Room: A Neurodynamic Perspective.

The initial models of team and team member dynamics using biometric data in healthcare will likely come from simulations. But how confident are we that the simulation-derived high-resolution dynamics will reflect those of teams working with live patients? We have developed neurodynamic models of a neurosurgery team while they performed a peroneal nerve decompression surgery on a patient to approach this question. The models were constructed from EEG-derived measures that provided second-by-second estimates of the neurodynamic responses of the team and team members to task uncertainty.

Measuring Real-Time Team Cognition During Team Training.

Objective: A method for detecting real-time changes in team cognition in the form of significant communication reorganizations is described. We demonstrate the method in the context of scenario-based simulation training.

Background: We present the dynamical view that individual- and team-level aspects of team cognition are temporally intertwined in a team's real-time response to challenging events.

Neuroergonomics: Quantitative Modeling of Individual, Shared, and Team Neurodynamic Information.

Objective: The aim of this study was to use the same quantitative measure and scale to directly compare the neurodynamic information/organizations of individual team members with those of the team.

Background: Team processes are difficult to separate from those of individual team members due to the lack of quantitative measures that can be applied to both process sets.

Method: Second-by-second symbolic representations were created of each team member's electroencephalographic power, and quantitative estimates of their neurodynamic organizations were calculated from the Shannon entropy of the symbolic data streams.

Are Neurodynamic Organizations A Fundamental Property of Teamwork?

When performing a task it is important for teams to optimize their strategies and actions to maximize value and avoid the cost of surprise. The decisions teams make sometimes have unintended consequences and they must then reorganize their thinking, roles and/or configuration into corrective structures more appropriate for the situation. In this study we ask: What are the neurodynamic properties of these reorganizations and how do they relate to the moment-by-moment, and longer, performance-outcomes of teams?.

Tracing Neurodynamic Information Flows during Teamwork.

The goal of this study was to evaluate different neurodynamic representations for their ability to describe the interactions of team members with each other and with the changing task. Electroencephalography (EEG) data streams were collected from six crew members of a submarine piloting and navigation team while they performed a required training simulation. A representation of neurodynamic organization was first generated by creating symbols every second that showed the EEG power levels of each crew member.

Cross-Level Effects Between Neurophysiology and Communication During Team Training.

Objective: We investigated cross-level effects, which are concurrent changes across neural and cognitive-behavioral levels of analysis as teams interact, between neurophysiology and team communication variables under variations in team training.

Background: When people work together as a team, they develop neural, cognitive, and behavioral patterns that they would not develop individually. It is currently unknown whether these patterns are associated with each other in the form of cross-level effects.

Modeling the neurodynamic organizations and interactions of teams.

Across-brain neurodynamic organizations arise when teams perform coordinated tasks. We describe a symbolic electroencephalographic (EEG) approach that identifies when team neurodynamic organizations occur and demonstrate its utility with scientific problem solving and submarine navigation tasks. Each second, neurodynamic symbols (NS) were created showing the 1-40 Hz EEG power spectral densities for each team member.

Neural signatures of team coordination are revealed by multifractal analysis.

The quality of a team depends on its ability to deliver information through a hierarchy of team members and negotiate processes spanning different time scales. That structure and the behavior that results from it pose problems for researchers because multiply-nested interactions are not easily separated. We explored the behavior of a six-person team engaged in a Submarine Piloting and Navigation (SPAN) task using the tools of dynamical systems.

Toward a quantitative description of the neurodynamic organizations of teams.

The goal was to develop quantitative models of the neurodynamic organizations of teams that could be used for comparing performance within and across teams and sessions. A symbolic modeling system was developed, where raw electroencephalography (EEG) signals from dyads were first transformed into second-by-second estimates of the cognitive Workload or Engagement of each person and transformed again into symbols representing the aggregated levels of the team. The resulting neurodynamic symbol streams had a persistent structure and contained segments of differential symbol expression.

The organizational neurodynamics of teams.

Our objective was to apply ideas from complexity theory to derive expanded neurodynamic models of Submarine Piloting and Navigation showing how teams cognitively organize around task changes. The cognitive metric highlighted was an electroencephalography-derived measure of engagement (termed neurophysiologic synchronies of engagement) that was modeled into collective team variables showing the engagement of each of six team members as well as that of the team as a whole. We modeled the cognitive organization of teams using the information content of the neurophysiologic data streams derived from calculations of their Shannon entropy.

Cognitive neurophysiologic synchronies: what can they contribute to the study of teamwork?

Objective: Cognitive neurophysiologic synchronies (NS) are low-level data streams derived from electroencephalography (EEG) measurements that can be collected and analyzed in near real time and in realistic settings. The objective of this study was to relate the expression of NS for engagement to the frequency of conversation between team members during Submarine Piloting and Navigation (SPAN) simulations.

Background: If the expression of different NS patterns is sensitive to changes in the behavior of teams, they may be a useful tool for studying team cognition.

Neurotechnology to accelerate learning: during marksmanship training.

This article explores the psychophysiological metrics during expert and novice performances in marksmanship, combat deadly force judgment and decision making (DFJDM), and interactions of teams. Electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocardiography (ECG) are used to characterize the psychophysiological profiles within all categories. Closed-loop biofeedback was administered to accelerate learning during marksmanship training in which the results show a difference in groups that received feedback compared with the control.