Basic and applied science interactions in fatigue understanding and risk mitigation

Research on fatigue often involves foundational research in service of addressing real-world problems. In the research discussed in this paper, we discuss this interplay between basic and applied science to highlight the contributions of basic science to informing policy and decision making to reduce risk and improve safety in this domain. We describe three areas of research-ground combat, flight operations, and fatigue countermeasures-where laboratory studies provide critical evidence regarding the causes and consequences of fatigue in applied settings, and discuss the role of that research in addressing real-world challenges. We close by offering some thoughts on the relationship between basic and applied research in this domain, and the synergistic potential between research on sleep loss and cognitive neuroscience.