Abstract
Three-person teams of fourth-year medical students or experienced operating room practitioners performed simulations around the construct of ventilation. Team member communications together with EEG-derived brainwaves were collected and classified each second and the changing neurodynamic as well as communication organizations of the team were modeled. The fluctuating neurodynamic organizations were obtained from symbolic representations of the EEG power levels of team members while changes in communication were determined by Latent Semantic analysis – derived measures of communication content.
The neurodynamic organizations of the teams at the 10 Hz (alpha) and 39 Hz (gamma) EEG frequencies fluctuated with task demands. The frequency, magnitudes, and durations of these fluctuations differed between novice and expert teams, and these changes in the team’s neurodynamic organizations were paralleled by dynamic changes in communication and improvements in TeamSTEPPS® ratings. Neurodynamic and communication measures of team organization may therefore be valuable tools for understanding and assessing the short term dynamics of teams during simulation training, complementing and extending observational evaluations of teams.
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