A new study involving cognitive tests and MRI scans discovered that brains of fighter pilots are more sensitive than a control group.

The study compared the cognitive performance of 11 front-line Royal Air Force Tornado fighter pilots with a control group of like IQ without any prior experience of flying aircrafts. All participants finished the two 'cognitive control' tasks, which were employed for rapid decision-making.

A certain kind of MRI brain scans, called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), was later employed for checking the structure of white matter links between brains areas linked to cognitive control.

The researchers discovered that the fighter pilots have greater cognitive control, displaying much more accuracy on one of the cognitive tasks, in spite of being more sensitive to irrelevant and distracting information.

The scans also showed the distinctions between pilots and controls within the microstructure of white matter in the right hand side inside the brain.

According to senior author Professor Masud Husain of the UCL Institute of Neurology and UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, their interest was mainly in the pilots since they frequently work at the restrictions of the human cognitive capability, i. e. they are experts in taking precise decisions at high speed.