Citation: Gu, H.; Chen, H.; Yao, Q.;
He, W.; Wang, S.; Yang, C.; Li, J.; Liu,
H.; Li, X.; Zhao, X.; et al. Efficiency of
the Brain Network Is Associated with
the Mental Workload with Developed
Mental Schema. Brain Sci. 2023, 13,
373. https://doi.org/10.3390/
brainsci13030373
Academic Editors: Enrico Vezzetti,
Andrea Luigi Guerra, Gabriele
Baronio, Domenico Speranza and
Luca Ulrich
Received: 9 December 2022
Revised: 31 January 2023
Accepted: 20 February 2023
Published: 21 February 2023
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
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4.0/).
Article
Efficiency of the Brain Network Is Associated with the Mental
Workload with Developed Mental Schema
Heng Gu
1,†
, He Chen
1,2,†
, Qunli Yao
1
, Wenbo He
1
, Shaodi Wang
1
, Chao Yang
1
, Jiaxi Li
1
, Huapeng Liu
3
,
Xiaoli Li
1
, Xiaochuan Zhao
3,
* and Guanhao Liang
1,
*
1
Center for Cognition and Neuroergonomics, State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning,
Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai 519087, China
2
School of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
3
Institute of Computer Applied Technology of China North Industries Group Corporation Limited,
Beijing 100821, China
* Correspondence: zhaoxch_mail@sina.com (X.Z.); simonleungbit@hotmail.com (G.L.)
† These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract:
The study of mental workload has attracted much interest in neuroergonomics, a frontier
field of research. However, there appears no consensus on how to measure mental workload
effectively because the mental workload is not only regulated by task difficulty but also affected by
individual skill level reflected as mental schema. In this study, we investigated the alterations in
the functional brain network induced by a 10-day simulated piloting task with different difficulty
levels. Topological features quantifying global and local information communication and network
organization were analyzed. It was found that during different tests, the global efficiency did not
change, but the gravity center of the local efficiency of the network moved from the frontal to the
posterior area; the small-worldness of the functional brain network became stronger. These results
demonstrate the reconfiguration of the brain network during the development of mental schema.
Furthermore, for the first two tests, the global and local efficiency did not have a consistent change
trend under different difficulty levels, but after forming the developed mental schema, both of them
decreased with the increase in task difficulty, showing sensitivity to the increase in mental workload.
Our results demonstrate brain network reconfiguration during the motor learning process and reveal
the importance of the developed mental schema for the accurate assessment of mental workload.
We concluded that the efficiency of the brain network was associated with mental workload with
developed mental schema.
Keywords:
mental workload; mental schema; functional brain network; small-worldness; global
efficiency; local efficiency
1. Introduction
The study of mental workload has attracted much interest in neuroergonomics, a
frontier field of research. Mental workload is defined as “the portion of an individual’s
limited mental capacity that is actually required by task demands” [
1
]. The increase in task
demands necessitates additional cognitive resources. When the demands of the task are
close to the mental capacity of the individual, known as mental overload, it may lead to
deteriorated performance [
2
]. While numerous physiological measures have been proposed,
there appears no consensus on their validity as effective agents of mental workload [
3
]
because mental workload is not an intrinsic attribute of the human brain but the result of
the interaction between the operation task and mental resources of the operator. It could be
affected by factors such as task demands, skill level, and problem-solving strategies [4].
Training is a process of improving competencies or performance by acquiring or
optimizing a series of inter-related movements for the goal. It can be observed that the
individuals usually go through the following stages: first, they try to understand what is
Brain Sci. 2023, 13, 373. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13030373 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/brainsci
