2022 Volume 21 Issue 2 Pages 247-256
To establish an objective method of evaluating emotion which is applicable to the development of in-vehicle products, this study aims to detect driver’s “feeling of excitement” and “feeling of nervousness” by observed physiological indices. Assuming that “feeling of excitement” is to be considered a pleasant arousal emotion and “feeling of nervousness” is regarded as unpleasant arousal emotion, we carried out the experiment to verify whether the above two emotions can be distinguished by means of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and heart rate variability (HRV). Eight participants riding on a simulated self-driving car were presented with the visual stimuli with intention to evoke the above two emotions. The result showed that oxyhemoglobin increased in prefrontal cortex when “feeling of excitement” was evoked and decreased when “feeling of nervousness” was evoked, meanwhile SDNN/RMSSD increased in both situations. We clarified the above two emotions were distinguishable using measurement of CBF and HRV.
