Is it safe to drive after acute mild stroke? A preliminary report

A novel computational model to probe visual search deficits during motor performance

“…Investigating the interactions between visual search and limb movements is especially important from a clinical viewpoint because lesions and/or diminished connectivity involving a broad network of brain regions can produce functional deficits (Corbetta et al 2005;Middleton and Strick 2000;Siegel et al 2016). The importance of visual search in functional performance is further highlighted by a recent study showing that stroke survivors with mild motor impairments and no visuospatial neglect perform similar to age-matched controls when driving in sparse traffic but make significantly more driving errors in heavy traffic (Hird et al 2015). This suggests that visuomotor performance is disrupted in complex visual environments that necessitate organized visual search.…”

Undetected and underserved: the untold story of patients who had a minor stroke

“…Research has found that one in four young survivors of stroke (aged 18–65 years) return to driving within 1 month after the stroke, despite recommendations to the contrary 13 . Drivers who have had a minor stroke perform significantly worse on complex tasks, with greater cognitive load (eg, turning across oncoming traffic and bus following), and make twice the number of driving errors compared with control subjects 14 . In addition to the detrimental influence of spatial, visual and cognitive impairments, the risk of seizure contributes to the moratorium on driving after a stroke.…”

Driving After Stroke

“…Some of the concerns include lack of repeatability of traffic events, reduced access to dual operated vehicle, the inability to assess driving ability during hazardous traffic situations or inclement weather conditions, the large variation in traffic demands and routes, different scoring systems, and low inter-rater reliability due to inconsistencies in judging the on-road driving performance by experts. These concerns prompted researchers to investigate the usefulness of novel assessment methods, including driving simulation technology, as indicators of the true driving capabilities of stroke survivors (Blane et al 2017;Hird et al 2015;Kobayashi et al 2016;Park 2015). Many recent studies have reported on the use of driving simulators in the assessment of fitness-to-drive of stroke survivors (Akinwuntan and Devos 2017).…”