Will self-driving vehicles lead to a surge of brain training?

Brain train­ing may be required for occu­pants of dri­ver­less vehi­cles (Traf­fic Technology):

“A much-tout­ed per­ceived ben­e­fit of autonomous vehi­cle tech­nol­o­gy is that work­ing and a vari­ety of leisure activ­i­ties could be per­formed dur­ing the time freed up from being behind the wheel.

How­ev­er, meet­ing in War­wick, the User Behav­iour Forum has heard how read­ing, email­ing, watch­ing films and tex­ting all have been found to induce motion sick­ness in a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple trav­el­ling in a mov­ing vehicle.

A study led by researcher Joe Smyth at WMG, a depart­ment at the uni­ver­si­ty, led to all par­tic­i­pants expe­ri­enc­ing at least some lev­el of unwell­ness while read­ing in a self-dri­ving car … The researchers dis­cov­ered that a series of cog­ni­tive tasks, sim­i­lar to brain train­ing puz­zles, was effec­tive in reduc­ing sick­ness by more than 56% in its first iter­a­tion. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that visu­al, audi­ble and hap­tic motion cues could also lim­it the unpleas­ant feel­ings is cur­rent­ly being investigated.

“When design­ing new trans­port solu­tions we need to remem­ber to con­cen­trate on the user and not get caught up pure­ly with the tech­nol­o­gy design,” said Forum chair, Sid­dartha Khast­gir of WMG, Uni­ver­si­ty of Warwick.

News in Context:

• Why you turn down the radio when you’re lost
• Can brain train­ing work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
• What are cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and how to boost them?