Brain Correlates of Lane Changing Reaction Time in Simulated Driving

Psychophysical studies have reported correlation between neural activity in frontal and parietal areas and subject's reaction time in simple tasks. Here we study whether similar correlates can also be identified in driver's electroencephalography (EEG) activity when they perform steering actions triggered by exogenous stimuli (e.g. obstacles along the road). We report analysis of the EEG signals of fifteen subjects while they drive in a realistic car simulator. We found that the peak latency of the event-related potentials in frontal and parietal areas significantly correlates with the onset of the steering behavior. Similarly, modulations of the power in the theta band (4-8 Hz) prior to the action also correlates with the reaction times. These results provide evidence of reliable neural markers of the driver's response variability.