Abstract
Mental fatigue is one of the main reasons for the decline of response inhibition. This study aimed to explore the impairing influence of mental fatigue on a driver’s response inhibition. The effects of mental fatigue on response inhibition were assessed by comparing brain activity and behavioral indices when performing a Go/NoGo task before and after a 90-min fatigue manipulation task. Participants in the driving group performed a simulated driving task, while individuals in the control group spent the same time watching movies. We found that participants in the driving group reported higher levels of mental fatigue and had a higher percentage of eye closure and larger lateral deviations from their lane positions, which indicated there was effective manipulation of mental fatigue through a prolonged simulated driving task. After manipulation of mental fatigue, we observed increased reaction time and miss rates, delayed NoGo-N2 latency and Go-P3 latency, and decreased NoGo-P3 amplitude, which indicated that mental fatigue may slow down the speed of the inhibition process, delay the evaluation of visual stimuli and reduce the availability of attentional resources. These findings revealed the underlying neurological mechanisms of how mental fatigue impaired response inhibition.
Highlights
Response inhibition, which is a core component of executive function[1], refers to the ability to inhibit inappropriate or irrelevant responses [2,3,4]
Simple effect analysis indicated that participants in the driving group reported higher levels of mental fatigue after a 90-min simulated driving task (M = 6.20, SD = 2.52, p < 0.001), but there was no significant difference before and after watching movies in the control group
Participants in the driving group had a higher percentage of eye closure (M = 12.6%, SD = 3.1%) and larger lateral deviations from their lane positions (M = 0.41 m, SD = 0.041 m) in the last 30 mins of the simulated driving task
Summary
Response inhibition, which is a core component of executive function[1], refers to the ability to inhibit inappropriate or irrelevant responses [2,3,4]. Many daily activities are associated with response inhibition. When an emergent road event occurs (e.g., a lead vehicle suddenly stops), the driver has to brake sharply, and failure to do so may lead to a catastrophic accident [6,7,8,9]. This operation consists of two processes that include inhibiting the process of stepping on the gas and initiating the process of slamming on the brakes.
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