According to a new study, you may not be as conscientious on the road as you think. In the study, researchers asked nine adults to participate in a driving simulation task for twenty minutes twice a day for five consecutive days intended to replicate a commute to and from work. They found that the brains of the participants frequently wandered away from the task at hand, as evidenced by brain activity patterns indicating reduced receptiveness to external stimuli. Study co-author Dr. Carryl Baldwin explains, “Mind wandering may be an essential part of human existence and unavoidable. It may be a way to restore the mind after a long day at the office. What we are not sure about yet, is how dangerous it is during driving. We need additional research to figure this out.”
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, August 2017