[tt] Electric Brain Stimulation to Help Bad Drivers

[Hughes, James J.]

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BrainStimulant/~3/358882335/tdcs-to-help-
bad-drivers.html

Electric Brain Stimulation to Help Bad Drivers

Can brain stimulation make you a better driver? In the past I've
mentioned transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as a method to
non-invasively stimulate areas on the brain's outer layer (the
neocortex) selectively with a small amount of electricity. With this
technology, you basically place two sponge electrodes on your head that
are connected to a 9 volt battery. The sponge electrode attached to the
anode (+) excites brain activity beneath it, while the sponge electrode
connected to the cathode (-) decreases brain activity underneath it. 

This technology can be performed on a person while they are fully awake
and it has few side effects aside from a slight tingling sensation.
Researchers have been using this technology for some interesting
experiments. In a recent one, they targeted an area of the brain called
the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for excitation to see its
influence on driving activity. This area of the brain is involved with
executive functioning and low activity here is associated with risk
taking activity.

    At a neural level, risk-taking behavior, decision-making and
impulsiveness share similar neural networks in the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Patients with lesions in the DLPFC
(especially in the right hemisphere) show riskier behavior than a
healthy control group.

They applied tDCS to both the left and right DLPFC for 15 minutes to
upregulate activity.

    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.

They found that doing this actually alters driving behavior and makes
people more cautious.

    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.

Are these results surprising? Not really. tDCS has already been used
numerous times to reduce risky behavior when people are performing other
activities. Do these researchers have too much time on their hands?
Maybe. I can imagine in the future instead of getting a fine for going
through a red traffic light, you might get a citation requiring you to
undergo a round of non-invasive brain stimulation to keep your risk
taking behavior in check. Decreasing risky behavior might be beneficial
for all sorts of population groups, like those who are addicted to drugs
or criminals. Whether this technology will ever actually be used on
those populations is another question entirely. There's nothing
theoretically stopping a person from performing stimulation on
themselves if they so desire. You can read the whole study here "Brain
stimulation modulates driving behavior".