Effect of emotional speech tone on driving from lab to road: fMRI and ERP studies

Evoked Response Potential (ERP) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) recordings in this study shed light on underlying neural mechanisms for higher cognitive processes and attention allocation during multitasking of cell phone conversations and driving. Behavioral results indicated that hands-free cellular phone conversations caused statistically significant but small reaction time effects for visual event detection during simulated and on-road driving. The validated Static Load driving paradigm gives rise to high correlations of red light reaction times between lab and on-road. Both ERP and fMRI findings suggested that cognitive distractions are correlated with increased cognitive load and attentional distribution. The novel contribution of this ERP and fMRI study is that adding an angry emotional valence to the speech increased the alertness level, resulting in reduced driver distraction, likely via increases in right frontoparietal networks and dampened or desynchronized left frontal activity.