Respiration and Heart Rate Modulation Due to Competing Cognitive Tasks While Driving

Research works on operator monitoring underline the benefit of taking into consideration several signal modalities to improve accuracy for an objective mental state diagnosis. Heart rate (HR) is one of the most utilized systemic measures to assess cognitive workload (CW), whereas, respiration parameters are hardly utilized. This study aims at verifying the contribution of analyzing respiratory signals to extract features to evaluate driver’s activity and CW variations in driving. Eighteen subjects participated in the study. The participants carried out two different cognitive tasks requiring different CW demands, a single task as well as a competing cognitive task realized while driving in a simulator. Our results confirm that both HR and breathing rate (BR) increase in driving and are sensitive to CW. However, HR and BR are differently modulated by the CW variations in driving. Specifically, HR is affected by both driving activity and CW, whereas, BR is suitable to evidence a variation of CW only when driving is not required. On the other hand, spectral features characterizing respiratory signal could be also used similarly to HR variability indices to detect high CW episodes. These results hint the use of respiration as an alternative to HR to monitor the driver mental state in autonomic vehicles in order to predict the available cognitive resources if the user has to take over the vehicle.

[1]  J F Thayer,et al.  Estimation of respiratory frequency from autoregressive spectral analysis of heart period. , 1996, Biomedical sciences instrumentation.

[2]  Maarten A. Hogervorst,et al.  Combining and comparing EEG, peripheral physiology and eye-related measures for the assessment of mental workload , 2014, Front. Neurosci..

[3]  Labarron K Hill,et al.  Are all measures created equal? Heart rate variability and respiration - biomed 2009. , 2009, Biomedical sciences instrumentation.

[4]  S. Tremblay,et al.  Using near infrared spectroscopy and heart rate variability to detect mental overload , 2014, Behavioural Brain Research.

[5]  D Robinson,et al.  Contributory factors to road accidents , 2006 .

[6]  A. Fort,et al.  Mind wandering and driving: responsibility case-control study , 2012, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[7]  Heikki Mansikka,et al.  Fighter pilots’ heart rate, heart rate variation and performance during instrument approaches , 2016, Ergonomics.

[8]  D Ruscio,et al.  Distraction or cognitive overload? Using modulations of the autonomic nervous system to discriminate the possible negative effects of advanced assistance system. , 2017, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[9]  Kamilla R. Johannsdottir,et al.  The Role of Working Memory in Supporting Drivers' Situation Awareness for Surrounding Traffic , 2010, Hum. Factors.

[10]  P. Lehrer,et al.  The Effects of Specific Respiratory Rates on Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability , 2003, Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback.

[11]  Joyce H. D. M. Westerink,et al.  Respiratory sinus arrhythmia responses to induced emotional states: Effects of RSA indices, emotion induction method, age, and sex , 2012, Biological Psychology.

[12]  S. Huffel,et al.  Instantaneous changes in heart rate regulation due to mental load in simulated office work , 2011, European Journal of Applied Physiology.

[13]  Vincent Pichot,et al.  HRVanalysis: A Free Software for Analyzing Cardiac Autonomic Activity , 2016, Front. Physiol..

[14]  Kwang Suk Park,et al.  The relationship between HRV parameters and stressful driving situation in the real road , 2007, 2007 6th International Special Topic Conference on Information Technology Applications in Biomedicine.

[15]  J. Veltman,et al.  Physiological indices of workload in a simulated flight task , 1996, Biological Psychology.

[16]  B. Appelhans,et al.  Heart Rate Variability as an Index of Regulated Emotional Responding , 2006 .

[17]  A. Fort,et al.  Inattention behind the wheel: how factual internal thoughts impact attentional control while driving , 2014 .

[18]  Łukasz Dziuda,et al.  Preliminary Results of the LF/HF Ratio as an Indicator for Estimating Difficulty Level of Flight Tasks. , 2015, Aerospace medicine and human performance.

[19]  Christophe Jallais,et al.  Towards real-time detection of cognitive effort in driving: contribution of cardiac measurement , 2017 .

[20]  Ying Le-an,et al.  Brief review on physiological and biochemical evaluations of human mental workload , 2012 .

[21]  Moshe Eizenman,et al.  An on-road assessment of cognitive distraction: impacts on drivers' visual behavior and braking performance. , 2007, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[22]  Barbara Deml,et al.  Electrocardiographic features for the measurement of drivers' mental workload. , 2017, Applied ergonomics.

[23]  Caroline Di Bernardi Luft,et al.  Heart rate variability and cognitive function: Effects of physical effort , 2009, Biological Psychology.

[24]  Mickaël Causse,et al.  Cardiovascular correlates of emotional state, cognitive workload and time-on-task effect during a realistic flight simulation. , 2018, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[25]  Brennan R. Payne,et al.  A Review of Psychophysiological Measures to Assess Cognitive States in Real-World Driving , 2019, Front. Hum. Neurosci..

[26]  Neville A. Stanton,et al.  Take-Over Time in Highly Automated Vehicles , 2018, Driver Reactions to Automated Vehicles.

[27]  Mircea Miclea,et al.  Reduced heart rate variability and vagal tone in anxiety: Trait versus state, and the effects of autogenic training , 2009, Autonomic Neuroscience.

[28]  D. de Waard,et al.  Short-term cardiovascular measures for driver support: Increasing sensitivity for detecting changes in mental workload. , 2014, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[29]  U. Koehler,et al.  [Respiratory Rate - a Neglected Vital Sign]. , 2017, Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift.

[30]  J. Dusek,et al.  Impact of Incremental Increases in Cognitive Workload on Physiological Arousal and Performance in Young Adult Drivers , 2009 .

[31]  E. Vlemincx,et al.  Respiratory variability preceding and following sighs: A resetter hypothesis , 2010, Biological Psychology.

[32]  Hongyan Wang,et al.  In Vehicle Diver Postural Monitoring using a Depth Camera Kinect , 2018 .

[33]  Guillaume Chanel,et al.  Emotion Assessment From Physiological Signals for Adaptation of Game Difficulty , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[34]  Christopher D. Wickens,et al.  Multiple resources and performance prediction , 2002 .

[35]  Neville A. Stanton,et al.  Takeover Time in Highly Automated Vehicles: Noncritical Transitions to and From Manual Control , 2017, Hum. Factors.

[36]  Kilseop Ryu,et al.  Evaluation of mental workload with a combined measure based on physiological indices during a dual task of tracking and mental arithmetic , 2005 .

[37]  G. Billman.  Heart Rate Variability – A Historical Perspective , 2011, Front. Physio..

[38]  E. Hari Krishna,et al.  Estimation of respiration rate from ECG, BP and PPG signals using empirical mode decomposition , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference.

[39]  J. Veltman,et al.  Physiological workload reactions to increasing levels of task difficulty. , 1998, Ergonomics.

[40]  G. Moody,et al.  Clinical Validation of the ECG-Derived Respiration (EDR) Technique , 2008 .

[41]  K. Hillman,et al.  Respiratory rate: the neglected vital sign , 2008, The Medical journal of Australia.

[42]  J. Thayer,et al.  Heart Rate Variability and Cardiac Vagal Tone in Psychophysiological Research – Recommendations for Experiment Planning, Data Analysis, and Data Reporting , 2017, Front. Psychol..

[43]  Shou-En Lu,et al.  The effects of workload on respiratory variables in simulated flight: A preliminary study , 2010, Biological Psychology.

[44]  Elke Vlemincx,et al.  Sigh rate and respiratory variability during mental load and sustained attention. , 2011, Psychophysiology.

[45]  E. Farmer,et al.  Evidence for a Visuo-Spatial Scratch-Pad in Working Memory , 1986 .

[46]  G. Benchetrit.  Breathing pattern in humans: diversity and individuality. , 2000, Respiration physiology.

[47]  Mickaël Causse,et al.  Neural and psychophysiological correlates of human performance under stress and high mental workload , 2016, Biological Psychology.

[48]  Elke Vlemincx,et al.  Respiratory Changes in Response to Cognitive Load: A Systematic Review , 2016, Neural plasticity.

[49]  Bryan Reimer,et al.  A Comparison of Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability Indices in Distinguishing Single-Task Driving and Driving Under Secondary Cognitive Workload , 2017 .

[50]  B. Oken,et al.  Sensitivity to mental effort and test–retest reliability of heart rate variability measures in healthy seniors , 2011, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[51]  A. Fort,et al.  Attention and driving performance modulations due to anger state: Contribution of electroencephalographic data , 2017, Neuroscience Letters.