Our Brain in the Car - Driver State Decoding with Magnetecephalography (MEG)

To investigate the interaction of cognitive processes and emotional distractions in more realistic scenarios, I conducted a neurophysiological study combining magnetencephalography (MEG) and eye-tracking in a simulated driving task. Partcipants where asked to drive through different sections of a highway, which were either a free highway or a construction site. The latter required a higher level of visuo-spatial attention due to sudden obstacles and a narrowed lane. During the ride, they listened to various audiobook segments which where either negative, positive or neutral in their prosody and content. The audiobooks where before validated in their valence and arousal using an independent sample of 25 participants. I am now analyzing the data using various encoding and decoding approaches mainly in the spectral domain and am super excited about the results… Hopefully, I have great news and publications soon!