The impact of driver sleepiness on fixation-related brain potentials
Journal article, 2020

The effects of driver sleepiness are often quantified as deteriorated driving performance, increased blink durations and high levels of subjective sleepiness. Driver sleepiness has also been associated with increasing levels of electroencephalogram (EEG) power, especially in the alpha range. The present exploratory study investigated a new measure of driver sleepiness, the EEG fixation-related lambda response. Thirty young male drivers (23.6 +/- 1.7 years old) participated in a driving simulator experiment in which they drove on rural and suburban roads in simulated daylight versus darkness during both the daytime (full sleep) and night-time (sleep deprived). The results show lower lambda responses during night driving and with longer time on task, indicating that sleep deprivation and time on task cause a general decrement in cortical responsiveness to incoming visual stimuli. Levels of subjective sleepiness and line crossings were higher under the same conditions. Furthermore, results of a linear mixed-effects model showed that low lambda responses are associated with high subjective sleepiness and more line crossings. We suggest that the fixation-related lambda response can be used to investigate driving impairment induced by sleep deprivation while driving and that, after further refinement, it may be useful as an objective measure of driver sleepiness.

line crossings

driver sleepiness

event-related potential

P1

fixation-related ERP

Author

Christer Ahlstrom

The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)

Linköping University

Ignacio Solis-Marcos

The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)

Emma Nilsson

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Vehicle Safety

Volvo Cars

Torbjorn Akerstedt

Karolinska Institutet

Stockholm University

Journal of Sleep Research

0962-1105 (ISSN) 1365-2869 (eISSN)

Vol. 29 5 e12962

Subject Categories

Infrastructure Engineering

Applied Psychology

Vehicle Engineering

DOI

10.1111/jsr.12962

PubMed

31828862

More information

Latest update

10/13/2020