Prefrontal Cortex Activation and Young Driver Behaviour: A fNIRS Study
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0156512
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Summary
This study investigates the relationship between prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation and driving behavior in young drivers, aiming to determine if reduced PFC maturation contributes to the higher accident rates observed in this demographic. Young drivers, particularly males, are overrepresented in road traffic accidents, a phenomenon often attributed to inexperience and risk-taking. However, accident rates remain higher for young novices compared to older novices even when experience is controlled, suggesting underlying neurological factors. The PFC, which matures last in the brain (around age 25), is critical for inhibitory control and managing mental workload—both key factors in driving safety. The researchers hypothesized that younger drivers would exhibit lower PFC activation than older drivers and that PFC activity would correlate with increases in mental workload and inhibitory control demands. The experiment utilized functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure PFC activity in 32 licensed drivers, categorized by age (18–19 vs. 21–22), experience (novice vs. experienced), and gender. Participants completed five simulated driving tasks in a fixed-base driving simulator: one following task and four overtaking tasks with varying traffic densities. The tasks were designed to dissociate mental workload from inhibitory control; overtaking generally increased both, while increasing traffic density maintained workload but required greater inhibitory control to suppress unsafe overtaking impulses. PFC activity was recorded throughout, and participants completed extended NASA-TLX questionnaires to subjectively rate mental demand and inhibitory control after each scenario. Results indicated that younger drivers exhibited significantly reduced PFC activity compared to older drivers. Subjective ratings confirmed that overtaking tasks were more mentally demanding and required greater inhibitory control than following tasks. Crucially, PFC activation increased when both mental workload and inhibitory control demands rose, but no significant change in activity occurred when inhibitory control demands increased alone. This suggests that PFC activation in this context is primarily indicative of mental workload rather than inhibitory control. Regarding behavior, there were no significant differences in the number of overtakes between younger and older drivers, but male drivers performed significantly more overtakes than female drivers. The study concludes that PFC activation during driving is closely associated with the mental workload required for complex maneuvers like overtaking. The reduced PFC activation observed in younger drivers supports the hypothesis that incomplete PFC maturation may contribute to their increased crash risk. This finding implies that young drivers may have a lower threshold for cognitive overload or reduced capacity for managing complex driving demands, independent of their driving experience. These insights highlight the potential value of neuroimaging in understanding the physiological underpinnings of young driver risk and could inform targeted interventions or training programs aimed at improving cognitive management in novice drivers.
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| extract | success | pdftotext | — | — | 4 | 2026-08-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-nvidia | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 16 | 2026-08-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-nvidia on 2026-08-10; verification: verified.
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- Empirical Findings: physiological data
- Theoretical Contribution: theory or model, computational model