State-of-Flight: Wearable EEG and Motion Context During Flying or Floating
IEEE 39th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS) 2026
Limassol, Cyprus, June 2026 · Published; full paper on IEEE Xplore
In-cabin recording: a Muse-class EEG headband with synchronized inertial measurements, here under a VR headset that standardizes the visual input.
Taxi, takeoff, cruise and landing bring vibration, engine noise, vestibular input and anticipatory arousal all at once. We call the resulting transition State-of-Flight and record it in the cabin with a Muse S/Athena-class EEG headband and its inertial sensors, then compare it with floating on water (our State-of-Float work).
Across a small field dataset (five flight participants, two controls, plus the float comparison), pooled epoch-level analyses show elevated theta/beta ratios in flight or floating phases relative to controls, with the broad variability expected of real-world wearable recordings. The paper is primarily about feasibility, instrumentation and a reusable analysis scaffold for larger studies in aviation and neuroergonomics.
The headband alone, worn through taxi, takeoff, cruise and landing.
Abstract
We introduce State-of-Flight/Float, a hypothesized transition state that may emerge during taxi, takeoff, cruise, landing, or floating, where vestibular input, vibration, engine noise, and anticipatory arousal co-occur. We report an in-cabin field protocol using a Muse S/Athena-class wearable EEG headband (4 channels, 256 Hz) with synchronized inertial measurements (IMU), together with a reproducible analysis pipeline based on 0.5–30 Hz preprocessing, 5 s epoching, and spectral feature extraction. Across a small field dataset (n = 5 flight participants, n = 2 control participants, along with a water-based float comparison dataset), pooled epoch-level analyses show elevated theta-beta ratios (TBR) in flight or floating phases relative to controls, with broad variability consistent with real-world wearable recordings. Frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) also varies across conditions, but is interpreted conservatively due to motion, fit variability, and sign-convention sensitivity. These results are preliminary and primarily demonstrate feasibility, instrumentation, and a reusable analysis scaffold for higher-powered future studies in aviation, neuroergonomics and motion-aware wearable sensing.
Authors
Alexander Vicol, Steve Mann, Chris McGale, Gianella Bejar-Alvarez, Michel Herrera Viyella, Darya Zanjanpour, Chan Park, Xiaoming Chen, Xueqi Yang, Bingxuan Yang
Links
- Paper on IEEE Xplore (DOI 10.1109/CBMS69103.2026.00031)
- Related project: State-of-Float
- Related project: State-of-Study in HBOT