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".