Heartbeat

Drivers may be more likely to crash if an obstacle appears at the same time as a heartbeat. To investigate how the beat of our hearts influences our [blank] times, Sarah Garfinkel at the University of Sussex, UK, and her colleagues designed a virtual reality driving game. While participants were driving, obstacles would appear in the road, either in time with a heartbeat or between beats. When objects coincided with heartbeats, drivers' reaction times were slower and they were more likely to [blank] . Garfinkel presented the results at New Scientist Live in London on Thursday, where she discussed the possible effect of systoles - the squeezing of the heart ventricles that occurs in the middle of a heartbeat - on driving. "If you're driving and you're in a highly [blank] state and your heart is beating [blank] and fast, you will have more cardiac systoles, and that is going to impair your reaction time and ability to avoid objects," she said.