Brain structure variability study in pilots based on VBM

The impact of occupations on brain structures has attracted considerable research interests in the last decade. The aim of this research is to find the effect of flight training on brain gray matter volume of pilots. The whole-brain structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) data collected from 26 pilots and 24 controls was analyzed using Voxel-based morphological analysis method (VBM) combined with T1 data to quantitatively detect the local gray matter of brain tissue and calculate the gray matter volume. The result shows that the pilot group has larger gray matter volume in the lingual gyrus and fusiform gyrus compared to the control group (P<0.05). Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between the gray matter volume and the number of flight hours (r = 0.426, P = 0.048) after studying the average gray matter volume value of the agglomerate of participants whose flight hours are between 0 and 1000 hours. The lingual gyrus and fusiform gyrus are involved in high-level visual processing, memory, multisensory integration and perception. The study has indicated the flight training could enlarge gray matter volume in the lingual gyrus and fusiform gyrus. During flying, pilots need to observe the instrumentation in the cockpit and fully interpret the readings, which may lead to the results.