Longtime driving induced cerebral hemodynamic elevation and behavior degradation as assessed by functional near‐infrared spectroscopy and a voluntary attention test

Drowsy driving contributes to ~20% of all traffic accidents worldwide. Onsite monitoring the mental condition of a driver and forewarning may be a preventive solution to reduce occurrence of drowsiness and potential accidents. Functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has been successfully utilized in hemodynamics‐interpreted functional activity in preliminary voluntary attention experiments. Here, we monitored hemodynamic alternations using fNIRS upon the prefrontal cortex over 13 volunteers in the course of a 7‐hour driving simulation and evaluated their reaction capability with a voluntary attention test based on Go/NoGo paradigm. A degradation in attention test score (Accuracy/RT) as well as the elevations in oxy‐hemoglobin (Δ[HbO2]) and total hemoglobin (Δ[tHb]) were found significantly correlated with driving duration (Accuracy/RT: r = −0.964, P < 0.001; Δ[HbO2]: r = 0.950, P < 0.001; Δ[tHb]: r = 0.852, P = 0.007). The hemodynamic parameters are in significant inverse correlations with Accuracy/RT (Δ[HbO2]: r = −0.896, p = 0.003; Δ[tHb]: r = −0.844, P = 0.008), indicating the potential to forewarn drivers the attention degradation with onsite fNIRS measurements.