Navigating the Road of Aging: How Older Adults Perceive Distances and Drive

Published on October 6, 2022

Imagine you’re on a road trip, cruising down the highway with nothing but the open horizon ahead. But as we get older, does our ability to judge distances change? A group of scientists set out to investigate this very question. Using a combination of a driving simulator and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they studied how older adults perceive distances in comparison to their younger counterparts. Surprisingly, they found that both young and old adults had similar performance when it came to judging distance, although older adults did take longer to respond. The researchers also discovered that the brains of older adults showed higher activation in certain areas, suggesting an adaptive rearrangement of brain resources. They also found a strong connection between distance perception and braking behaviors while driving. These findings suggest that age does not significantly affect our ability to judge distances accurately, thanks to the brain’s resilience and flexibility. To learn more about this fascinating study and its implications for aging and driving safety, dive into the details of the research!

The ability to appropriately perceive distances in activities of daily living, such as driving, is necessary when performing complex maneuvers. With aging, certain driving behaviors and cognitive functions change; however, it remains unknown if egocentric distance perception (EDP) performance is altered and whether its neural activity also changes as we grow older. To that end, 19 young and 17 older healthy adults drove in a driving simulator and performed an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment where we presented adults with an EDP task. We discovered that (a) EDP task performance was similar between groups, with higher response times in older adults; (b) older adults showed higher prefrontal and parietal activation; and (c) higher functional connectivity within frontal and parietal-occipital-cerebellar networks; and (d) an association between EDP performance and hard braking behaviors in the driving simulator was found. In conclusion, EDP functioning remains largely intact with aging, possibly due to an extended and effective rearrangement in functional brain resources, and may play a role in braking behaviors while driving.

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