Balkhoyor, AM, Awais, M, Biyani, S et al. (6 more authors) (2020) Frontal theta brain activity varies as a function of surgical experience and task error. BMJ Surgery, Interventions, & Health Technologies, 2 (1). e000040. ISSN 2631-4940
Abstract
Objective Investigations into surgical expertise have almost exclusively focused on overt behavioral characteristics with little consideration of the underlying neural processes. Recent advances in neuroimaging technologies, for example, wireless, wearable scalp-recorded electroencephalography (EEG), allow an insight into the neural processes governing performance. We used scalp-recorded EEG to examine whether surgical expertise and task performance could be differentiated according to an oscillatory brain activity signal known as frontal theta—a putative biomarker for cognitive control processes.
Design, setting, and participants Behavioral and EEG data were acquired from dental surgery trainees with 1 year (n=25) and 4 years of experience (n=20) while they performed low and high difficulty drilling tasks on a virtual reality surgical simulator. EEG power in the 4–7 Hz range in frontal electrodes (indexing frontal theta) was examined as a function of experience, task difficulty and error rate.
Results Frontal theta power was greater for novices relative to experts (p=0.001), but did not vary according to task difficulty (p=0.15) and there was no Experience × Difficulty interaction (p=0.87). Brain–behavior correlations revealed a significant negative relationship between frontal theta and error in the experienced group for the difficult task (r=−0.594, p=0.0058), but no such relationship emerged for novices.
Conclusion We find frontal theta power differentiates between surgical experiences but correlates only with error rates for experienced surgeons while performing difficult tasks. These results provide a novel perspective on the relationship between expertise and surgical performance.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) EP/R031193/1 MRC (Medical Research Council) MC_PC_17165 Alan Turing Institute No ref given |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 29 Sep 2020 11:53 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:26 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BMJ Publishing Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1136/bmjsit-2020-000040 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:166016 |