Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 4, 2025
Evaluating Flight Performance and Eye Movement Patterns Using Virtual Reality Flight Simulator
Published on: May 19, 2023
Brain structural plasticity in visual and sensorimotor areas of airline pilots: A voxel-based morphometric study
Chuanya Qiu1, Chunyu Zhao2, Gang Hu3
1Department of Radiology, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital of the Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100020, China; Department of Radiology, Civil Aviation General Hospital, Beijing, 100123, China.
Background And Purpose:
Airline pilot is a highly specialized profession that requires to response quickly and accurately in the presence of a wide variety of visual information. Although functional imaging studies have employed virtual simulation to identify brain areas that underlie various flying-related tasks, little is known about the specific patterns of structural plasticity in the airline pilot's brain.
Materials And Methods:
In this study, we examined differences of gray matter and white matter volumes between 42 airline pilots and 39 non-pilots by using voxel-based morphometry, and further assessed the association between magnitude of structural alterations and flight time in the pilots.
Results:
We found significantly increased white matter volume in the cuneus area in the pilot group compared to the non-pilot group (p < 0.05, FWE corrected). Using a relaxed threshold, it was also observed that the pilots had increased gray matter volume in the lingual gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, cuneus, and postcentral gyrus, and increased white matter volume in the postcentral area (p < 0.001, uncorrected). Moreover, the pilots' flight time was positively correlated with gray matter volume in the postcentral gyrus and white matter volume in the cuneus area (p < 0.001, uncorrected).
Conclusions:
The morphological changes in specific visual and sensorimotor areas may provide airline pilots with neural efficiency in the visuo-motor processing related to flight.
