Audiovisual messages may improve the processing of traffic information and driver attention during partially automated driving: An EEG study.

Partially autonomous vehicles can help minimize human errors. However, being free from some driving subtasks can result in a low vigilance state, which can affect the driver's attention towards the road. The present study first tested whether drivers of partially autonomous vehicles would benefit from the addition of auditory versions of the messages presented in variable message signs (VMS), particularly, when they find themselves in a monotonous driving situation.

Driving anxiety and anxiolytics while driving: Their impacts on behaviour and cognition behind the wheel.

Introduction: The interaction between road safety and drivers' mental health is an important issue to take into consideration on transportation and safety research. The present review deals specifically with the link between anxiety and driving activity from two complementary points of view.

Method: A systematic review into primary studies, following the PRISMA statement, was carried out in four databases: Scopus, Web of Science, Transport Research International Documentation and Pubmed.

Cognitive and body manifestations of driving anxiety according to different onsets.

Driving anxiety can have deleterious effects not only on driving behavior, but also on life quality. The interaction between motor vehicle collision (MVC) experiences and driving anxiety has been studied from different standpoints. However, the comparison with other events triggering it has been scarcely considered.

Hemodynamic responses to visual cues during attentive listening in autonomous versus manual simulated driving: A pilot study.

Emerging automation technologies could have a strong impact on the allocation of drivers' attentional resources. The first objective of this pilot study is to investigate the hemodynamic responses evoked to relevant visual stimuli in manual and autonomous driving. The second aim is to examine how the inclusion of a secondary task (attentive listening to a broadcast) modulates these hemodynamic responses in both driving situations.

Respiration and Heart Rate Modulation Due to Competing Cognitive Tasks While Driving.

Research works on operator monitoring underline the benefit of taking into consideration several signal modalities to improve accuracy for an objective mental state diagnosis. Heart rate (HR) is one of the most utilized systemic measures to assess cognitive workload (CW), whereas, respiration parameters are hardly utilized. This study aims at verifying the contribution of analyzing respiratory signals to extract features to evaluate driver's activity and CW variations in driving.

Do distinct mind wandering differently disrupt drivers? Interpretation of physiological and behavioral pattern with a data triangulation method.

MW is damaging for tasks requiring sustained and divided attention, for example driving. Recent findings seem to be indicating that off-task thoughts differently disrupt drivers. The present paper delved into characteristics of off-task thoughts to assess their respective detrimental impact on driving.

Digital, analogue, or redundant speedometers for truck driving: Impact on visual distraction, efficiency and usability.

Existing literature does not draw conclusions as to which speedometer type is better for truck driving. A digital speedometer would be more beneficial when obtaining absolute and relative readings, while an analogue speedometer would be more efficient and less distracting when detecting dynamic speed changes. Redundant speedometers, which simultaneously present digital and analogue speedometers, appear increasingly in vehicles, but no information is available on their ergonomic qualities.

Attention and driving performance modulations due to anger state: Contribution of electroencephalographic data.

Driver internal state, including emotion, can have negative impacts on road safety. Studies have shown that an anger state can provoke aggressive behavior and impair driving performance. Apart from driving, anger can also influence attentional processing and increase the benefits taken from auditory alerts.

Automotive HMI design and participatory user involvement: review and perspectives.

Automotive human-machine interface (HMI) design is facing new challenges due to the technological advances of the last decades. The design process has to be adapted in order to address human factors and road safety challenges. It is now widely accepted that user involvement in the HMI design process is valuable.

The impact of false warnings on partial and full lane departure warnings effectiveness and acceptance in car driving.

In the past, lane departure warnings (LDWs) were demonstrated to improve driving behaviours during lane departures but little is known about the effects of unreliable warnings. This experiment focused on the influence of false warnings alone or in combination with missed warnings and warning onset on assistance effectiveness and acceptance. Two assistance unreliability levels (33 and 17%) and two warning onsets (partial and full lane departure) were manipulated in order to investigate interaction.

The restless mind while driving: drivers' thoughts behind the wheel.

Unlabelled: Recent research has clearly shown that inattention when driving has an indisputable impact on road safety. "Mind wandering" (MW), an inattentional state caused by a shift in attention from the ongoing task to inner thoughts, is not only frequent in everyday activities but also known to impact performance. There is a growing body of research investigating the concept of MW, suggesting potential causes that could foster such a phenomenon.

Assessing the Impact of Anger State on the Three Attentional Networks with the ANT-I.

Anger is a negative and highly aroused emotion. Previous research has revealed that a high level of arousal can induce the participant in a physical preparation and self-awareness. The aim of this research was to study the influence of anger on the attentional network using the Attention Network Test-Interactions (ANT-I).

Distraction and driving: results from a case-control responsibility study of traffic crash injured drivers interviewed at the emergency room.

Background: Use of cellular phones has been shown to be associated with crashes but many external distractions remain to be studied.

Objective: To assess the risk associated with diversion of attention due to unexpected events or secondary tasks at the wheel.

Design: Responsibility case-control study.

Effectiveness of a Forward Collision Warning System in simple and in dual task from an electrophysiological perspective.

Forward Collision Warning Systems (FCWS) are expected to assist drivers; however, it is not completely clear whether these systems are of benefit to distracted drivers as much as they are to undistracted drivers. This study aims at investigating further the analysis of the effectiveness of a surrogate FCWS according to the attentional state of participants. In this experiment electrophysiological and behavioural data were recording while participants were required to drive in a simple car simulator and to react to the braking of the lead vehicle which could be announced by a warning system.

Mind wandering and driving: responsibility case-control study.

Objective: To assess the association between mind wandering (thinking unrelated to the task at hand) and the risk of being responsible for a motor vehicle crash.

Design: Responsibility case-control study.

Setting: Adult emergency department of a university hospital in France, April 2010 to August 2011.

An electrophysiological study of the impact of a Forward Collision Warning System in a simulator driving task.

Driver distraction has been identified as the most important contributing factor in rear-end collisions. In this context, Forward Collision Warning Systems (FCWS) have been developed specifically to warn drivers of potential rear-end collisions. The main objective of this work is to evaluate the impact of a surrogate FCWS and of its reliability according to the driver's attentional state by recording both behavioral and electrophysiological data.

Impact of totally and partially predictive alert in distracted and undistracted subjects: An event related potential study.

Rear-end collisions represent about 30% of all car crashes and generate a significant economic cost for society. Driver inattention has been identified as the most important contributing factor in rear-end collisions. One possible countermeasure is the use of systems that warn drivers of potential collisions.

Attentional demand and processing of relevant visual information during simulated driving: a MEG study.

It is a well-known fact that attention is crucial for driving a car. This innovative study aims to assess the impact of attentional workload modulation on cerebral activity during a simulated driving task using magnetoencephalography (MEG). A car simulator equipped with a steering wheel, turn indicators, an accelerator and a brake pedal has been specifically designed to be used with MEG.

Is the auditory sensory memory sensitive to visual information?

The mismatch negativity (MMN) component of auditory event-related brain potentials can be used as a probe to study the representation of sounds in auditory sensory memory (ASM). Yet it has been shown that an auditory MMN can also be elicited by an illusory auditory deviance induced by visual changes. This suggests that some visual information may be encoded in ASM and is accessible to the auditory MMN process.

Task-dependent activation latency in human visual extrastriate cortex.

Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from subjects who had to perform either an identification task or a simple detection task on moving visual stimuli. Results showed that the amplitude of the so-called visual "N1" component was larger for identification than for mere detection, replicating previous data obtained with static stimuli. However, we also found that: (i) the onset, peak and offset latencies of the visual N1 to dynamic stimuli were significantly earlier in the detection task than in the identification task, and (ii) in both conditions, the coordinates of the equivalent current dipoles best explaining the visual N1 component were consistent with those of the human motion visual area MT+/V5 in the extrastriate cortex.

Bimodal speech: early suppressive visual effects in human auditory cortex.

While everyone has experienced that seeing lip movements may improve speech perception, little is known about the neural mechanisms by which audiovisual speech information is combined. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects performed an auditory recognition task among four different natural syllables randomly presented in the auditory (A), visual (V) or congruent bimodal (AV) condition. We found that: (i) bimodal syllables were identified more rapidly than auditory alone stimuli; (ii) this behavioural facilitation was associated with cross-modal [AV-(A+V)] ERP effects around 120-190 ms latency, expressed mainly as a decrease of unimodal N1 generator activities in the auditory cortex.

Dynamics of cortico-subcortical cross-modal operations involved in audio-visual object detection in humans.

Very recently, a number of neuroimaging studies in humans have begun to investigate the question of how the brain integrates information from different sensory modalities to form unified percepts. Already, intermodal neural processing appears to depend on the modalities of inputs or the nature (speech/non-speech) of information to be combined. Yet, the variety of paradigms, stimuli and technics used make it difficult to understand the relationships between the factors operating at the perceptual level and the underlying physiological processes.

Early auditory-visual interactions in human cortex during nonredundant target identification.

A common finding of behavioral studies is that objects characterized by redundant multisensory cues are identified more rapidly than the same objects presented in either unimodal condition. In a previous electrophysiological study in humans, we have described a network of crossmodal interactions that could be associated with this facilitation effect [M.H.