D. Harris (Ed.): Engin. Psychol. and Cog. Ergonomics, HCII 2009, LNAI 5639, pp. 187–196, 2009. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009 Analyzing Control-Display Movement Compatibility: A Neuroimaging Study S.M. Hadi Hosseini 1 , Maryam Rostami 1 , Makoto Takahashi 1 , Naoki Miura 2,3 , Motoaki Sugiura 2 , and Ryuta Kawashima 2 1 Department of Management Science & Technology, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan hadi.hosseini@most.tohoku.ac.jp 2 Departement of Functional Brain Imaging, Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan 3 Department of Intelligence Mechanical Systems Engineering, Kochi University of Technology, Japan Abstract. Despite the huge number of studies on control-display compatibility conducted over the past fifty years, there are still debates concerning the effi- cacy of conventional measures such as subjective evaluation and performance measures for discriminating between compatible and incompatible control- display mappings. Since compatibility refers to the control-display relationship corresponding to mental model of the users, we tried to apply functional neuro- imaging technique as a direct objective measure for analyzing cognitive factors involved in human-machine interaction (HMI). Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was applied in order to analyze rotary control-linear display movement compatibility for horizontal and vertical linear displays. Although the results of behavioral measures were not significantly different for incom- patible and compatible control-display mappings, neuroimaging results were quite successful in discriminating between them. Moreover, the fMRI results showed significantly greater brain activity for the incompatible condition than for the compatible one in the left posterior cingulate and the right inferior tem- poral gyrus that reveals the involvement of a greater cognitive load in terms of attention and visuomotor transformation in the incompatible condition. The re- sults of this study suggest that neuroimaging method is a good complement to conventional measures and is quite helpful to acquire a better understanding of the cognitive processes involved in HMI. 1 Introduction Human interactions with machines and equipment are basically performed through interfaces that include several displays and controls. Information about the system status is presented through displays and necessary actions are taken by users using corresponding controls which further affect the displayed signals. There is usually a preferred mapping between characteristics of display signals and elements in response set of corresponding control for most people that is called compatible mapping or population stereotype [26]. This mapping can be defined in different aspects of