An ongoing program of research in my current lab is to accurately monitor workload in drivers. In this project, we were interested to measure fNIRS, a measure of oxygen in the brain while people drove in a simulator and completed a working memory task.
These data were first presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference 2014.
This figure shows how the levels of oxygenated blood change based on task difficulty; more oxygen (HbO) was used as the task gets harder.
In addition to brain measures, we also considered physiological metrics such as heart rate and galvanic skin response, and driving performace such as velocity over time. As the task gets harder, your heart rate goes up, and your driving gets worse. However this effect diminishes over time.
The entire project was compiled as a 36x48 'poster' for a conference.
