ISC25, Catania: Stress and Biomarkers

ISC25, the third International Summer Conference of the Decision Science Alliance, was hosted by the University of Catania on 19 and 20 June 2025 under the title Intelligent Systems & Decision Making: Human Insights in the Era of AI. Alongside its roundtables, the conference gave researchers the chance to present new work on how people and intelligent systems decide under pressure.

On Thursday 19 June, Captain Giacomo Belloni presented, on behalf of HUMAI Research, his latest academic study, written with Francesca Antonella Aiello of Math Biology: Mitigating Stress and Cognitive Impairment in Airline Pilots Through Biomarkers.

The talk opened with the many sources of pressure that pilots handle at the same time: time pressure and high workload, weather, the operating environment, rules and procedures, system malfunctions, limited resources, and the fear and emotion that come with high levels of risk. Each of these interacts with the others in multiple feedback loops, which raises a simple question: who should manage all this complexity?

The study then followed the stress response from brain to body, from the hormonal cascade that releases cortisol and adrenaline to its visible effects on heart rate, breathing, sweating and attention. Under acute stress, attention narrows into tunnel vision and the reasoning functions of the prefrontal cortex give way to more instinctive reactions. Measurable physiological signals of this kind can act as biomarkers, giving an objective picture of when stress begins to impair a pilot’s cognitive performance and opening the way to monitoring and training strategies that help prevent it.

Many thanks to the Decision Science Alliance and to Math Biology for their warm hospitality and invaluable support.

Official event website