Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to elucidate a neural substrate of specific skills of air traffic control operator to manipulate spatial information. For this purpose, we used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure cortical activities during mental imagery task that asked participants to construct a 3d-object by imagination. And, actual air traffic control operators participated as a skilled group and age- and IQ- matched healthy volunteers participated as a control group to depict a difference of cortical activity during manipulation of spatial information between groups. The fMRI result demonstrated that the skilled group showed higher performance to the task, and significant increase of cortical activation on the left inferior frontal gyrus, and medial part of prefrontal cortex, compared with the control group. This result suggested that the differential activation may reflect the working memory performance, the air traffic control operator may use different strategy to utilize working memory to take advantage of 3d-object information.
