Brain stimulation modulates driving behavior

Abstract

Background: Driving a car is a complex task requiring coordinated functioning of distributed brain regions. Controlled and safe driving depends on the integrity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a brain region, which has been shown to mature in late adolescence.

Methods: In this study, driving performance of twenty-four male participants was tested in a high-end driving simulator before and after the application of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for 15 minutes over the left or right DLPFC.

Results: We show that external modulation of both, the left and the right, DLPFC directly influences driving behavior. Excitation of the DLPFC (by applying anodal tDCS) leads to a more careful driving style in virtual scenarios without the participants noticing changes in their behavior.

Conclusion: This study is one of the first to prove that external stimulation of a specific brain area can influence a multi-part behavior in a very complex and everyday-life situation, therefore breaking new ground for therapy at a neural level.

Figure 1

Differences between anodal and cathodal tDCS. Depicted are differences and standard errors (SE) between pre- and post-stimulation driving behavior (POST minus PRE) pooled across the two experimental groups (left DLPFC and right DLPFC stimulation). The p-values indicate the significances of the 'time × condition' interactions for each of the four behavioral variables.

Figure 2

Left- vs. right-hemispheric DLPFC stimulation. Depicted are performance changes from pre- to post-stimulation measurements in percent ((POST*100)/PRE) and standard errors (SE) separately for two experimental groups (left DLPFC and right DLPFC stimulation).