Silexan does not affect driving performance after single and multiple dose applications: Results from a double-blind, placebo and reference-controlled study in healthy volunteers.

Anxiolytic drugs often have sedative effects that impair the ability to drive. Our double-blind, randomized crossover trial investigated the effect of Silexan, a non-sedating, anxiolytic herbal medicinal product, on driving performance in healthy volunteers. Part 1 aimed at demonstrating equivalence between 80 mg/d Silexan and placebo.

Effect of different alcohol levels on take-over performance in conditionally automated driving.

Automated driving systems are getting pushed into the consumer market, with varying degrees of automation. Most often the driver's task will consist of being available as a fall-back level when the automation reaches its limits. These so-called take-over situations have attracted a great body of research, focusing on various human factors aspects (e.

Driving performance under alcohol in simulated representative driving tasks: an alcohol calibration study for impairments related to medicinal drugs.

Comparing drug-induced driving impairments with the effects of benchmark blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) is an approved approach to determine the clinical relevance of findings for traffic safety. The present study aimed to collect alcohol calibration data to validate findings of clinical trials that were derived from a representative test course in a dynamic driving simulator. The driving performance of 24 healthy volunteers under placebo and with 0.

Effects of oxcarbazepine and carbamazepine on driving ability: a double-blind, randomized crossover trial with healthy volunteers.

Rationale: Carbamazepine (CBZ) is known to produce cognitive side effects being at least partly relevant for driving. In contrast to this, the cognitive effects of oxcarbazepine (OXC) are suspected to be less pronounced.

Objective: This study aimed to test 900 mg/day OXC as compared to 600 mg/day CBZ with respect to driving.

You can see pain in the eye: pupillometry as an index of pain intensity under different luminance conditions.

Pupil dilation is regulated autonomically and it may be a valid measure of pain, but pupillometry for pain intensity recordings has not been evaluated under different luminance conditions. We hypothesized that the pupil response may serve as an objective indicator of pain intensity even if luminance conditions differ which is often the case in experiments with pictures. In 20 healthy females we applied a tonic pressure pain to the fingers (20 s).

Distinct effects of attention and affect on pain perception and somatosensory evoked potentials.

The influence of affect and attention on sensory and affective pain as well as on somatosensory evoked potentials in response to painful and nonpainful electrical stimuli was investigated in a single experimental design. Affect was induced by pictures from the International Affective Picture System; attention was manipulated by asking participants to focus attention either on the pictures or on the electrical stimuli. Sensory and affective pain ratings were generally lower during exposure to positive compared to negative and neutral pictures.

Pain modulation during drives through cold and hot virtual environments.

Evidence exists that virtual worlds reduce pain perception by providing distraction. However, there is no experimental study to show that the type of world used in virtual reality (VR) distraction influences pain perception. Therefore, we investigated whether pain triggered by heat or cold stimuli is modulated by "warm "or "cold " virtual environments and whether virtual worlds reduce pain perception more than does static picture presentation.

Musically induced arousal affects pain perception in females but not in males: a psychophysiological examination.

The present study investigated affective and physiological responses to changes of tempo and mode in classical music and their effects on heat pain perception. Thirty-eight healthy non-musicians (17 female) listened to sequences of 24 music stimuli which were variations of 4 pieces of classical music. Tempo (46, 60, and 95 beats/min) and mode (major and minor) were manipulated digitally, all other musical elements were held constant.

Is emotion processing affected by advancing age? An event-related brain potential study.

The recognition of emotions is presumably affected by advancing age, which is known from subjective reports and recognition tasks. To differentiate perception from executive function more clearly, the discrimination of emotions was investigated with event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from 21 electrodes in 14 elderly (ages 59-74) and 13 younger participants (ages 30-40) triggered by a rapid (3 Hz) serial visual presentation (RSVP) of high and low arousing pictures. Additionally, affective ratings of valence and arousal of a representative sample of 54 pictures were obtained.

Affective modulation of brain potentials to painful and nonpainful stimuli.

In accordance with the emotional priming hypothesis, emotions seem to modulate pain perception and pain tolerance thresholds. To further evaluate this association, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by painful and nonpainful electrical stimuli during processing of positive, neutral, and negative valenced pictures were recorded from 30 healthy volunteers. Valence of pictures affected pain ratings and the N150 elicited by painful stimuli, with lowest amplitudes for positive pictures and highest amplitudes for negative pictures.