question: When you're driving on the road whilst lost deep in thought, does the subconscious / muscle memory ensure you're driving properly? Looking for an ELI5 on this.
comment: I think the best way to think about this is that your brain has multiple parts, and those parts can work on different problems simultaneously. These parts can be physically different regions of your brain or just different conceptually. In addition to driving and thinking, you are also breathing and maintaining your position in the seat. You might also be chewing gum, Tapping your fingers in rhythm with music, and a variety of other things. There is a part of your brain that is good at solving problems. But this part is not involved in normal driving. It'll get involved if it needs to be, and then you will not be able to be lost in deep through anymore. For example, if you miss a turn and need to plan a new route, then you must pause whatever other topic you were thinking about. If you approach a 4 way stop and are not sure whose turn it is, then the problem solving part of your brain must shift focus to decide whose turn it is. If there is an accident in front of you, the problem solving part of your brain will shift focus, but it won't help you avoid the accident. it is much to slow. Your reflexes will help you avoid the accident and your higher reasoning will then start analyzing what happen. Reflex training is important in many fields. In any fast occurring situation (military combat, sports, fast pace video games) training is important. Because problem solving thinking is too slow you need to train so that you can react appropriately in the different situations you encounter. This is why its hard to drive in snow. If you start slipping you cannot think through a solution to stop slipping. You only have time to react. If you have no practice driving in snow, you won't react properly.
passages: A 2012 study from Washington University, St. Louis described the global connectivity of the prefrontal cortex. Global connectivity is the mechanism by which components of the frontoparietal brain network might coordinate control of other tasks. Cole et al. wrote that:
  
  "A lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) region's activity was found to predict performance in a high control demand working memory task and also to exhibit high global connectivity. Critically, global connectivity in this LPFC region, involving connections both within and outside the frontoparietal network, showed a highly selective relationship with individual differences in fluid intelligence."
   Sufficient sleep before driving improves memory. Researchers recorded activity in the hippocampus during learning, and recorded from the same locations during sleep. The results were patterns that occurred during sleep resembled those that occurred during learning, except they were more rapid during sleep. Also, the amount of hippocampal activity during sleep correlated highly with a subsequent improvement in performance.
  
  Signs that tell a driver of a need to stop and rest:
  
  BULLET::::1. Difficulty focusing, frequent blinking, or heavy eyelids
  
  BULLET::::2. Daydreaming; wandering/disconnected thoughts
  
  BULLET::::3. Trouble remembering last few miles driven or missing exits and street signs
  
  BULLET::::4. Yawning repeatedly/rubbing eyes
   An interesting study investigating taxi drivers' memory for streets in Helsinki, Finland, examined the role of prelearned spatial knowledge. This study compared experts to a control group to determine how this prelearned knowledge in their skill domain allows them to overcome the capacity limitations of STM and WM. The study used four levels of spatial randomness:
  
  BULLET::::- Route Order – spatially continuous route
  
  BULLET::::- Route Random – spatially continuous list presented randomly
  
  BULLET::::- Map Order – street names forming a straight line on the map, but omitting intermediate streets
  
  BULLET::::- Map Random – streets on map presented in random order
   Patients with frontal lobe damage, such as Phineas Gage, provided the first evidence that the frontal lobes were associated with decision-making. Frontal lobe damage, particularly to the Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), results in impaired abilities to organize and plan behavior and learn from previous mistakes, without affecting intellect in terms of working memory, attention, and language comprehension and expression.
   When considering the frontal lobes in regards to memory, we see that it is very important in the coordination of information. Therefore, the frontal lobes are important in working memory. For example, when you are thinking about how to get to a mall you have never been to before, you combine various bits of knowledge you already have: the layout of the city the mall is in, information from a map, knowledge of traffic patterns in that area and conversations with your friends about the location of the mall. By actively using all of this information, you can determine the best route for you to take. This action involves the controlled use of information in working memory, coordinated by the frontal lobes.
   Another study examined the activation patterns of 5 people who woke up from microsleeps in a simulated driving experiment. It was found that upon awakening the visual area, frontal cortex, limbic lobe were activated (in the intense activation phase) and the frontal cortex, temporal cortex, primary motor area, and insula were activated (in the post abrupt awakening phase). Therefore, the study concluded that decision-making was not activated immediately upon waking up from a MS episode, likely increasing risk of injury in intense decision-making tasks like driving or surgery.
   BULLET::::- Procedural memory is memory for the performance of particular types of action. It is often activated on a subconscious level, or at most requires a minimal amount of conscious effort. Procedural memory includes stimulus-response-type information, which is activated through association with particular tasks, routines, etc. A person is using procedural knowledge when they seemingly "automatically" respond in a particular manner to a particular situation or process. An example is driving a car.
   Neurologically, this behavioural repertoire clearly requires a neural system that is able to integrate the stimulus (the road) with a context (US or UK) to cue a behaviour (look left or look right). Current evidence suggests that neurons in the PFC appear to represent precisely this sort of information. Other evidence from single-cell electrophysiology in monkeys implicates ventrolateral PFC (inferior prefrontal convexity) in the control of motor responses. For example, cells that increase their firing rate to NoGo signals as well as a signal that says "don't look there!" have been identified.
  
  Section::::Experimental evidence.:Attentional biasing in sensory regions.
   In "The Extended Mind", a thought experiment is presented to further illustrate the environment's role in connection to the mind. The fictional characters Otto and Inga are both travelling to a museum simultaneously. Otto has Alzheimer's disease, and has written all of his directions down in a notebook to serve the function of his memory. Inga is able to recall the internal directions within her memory. In a traditional sense, Inga can be thought to have had a belief as to the location of the museum before consulting her memory. In the same manner, Otto can be said to have held a belief of the location of the museum before consulting his notebook. The argument is that the only difference existing in these two cases is that Inga's memory is being internally processed by the brain, while Otto's memory is being served by the notebook. In other words, Otto's mind has been extended to include the notebook as the source of his memory. The notebook qualifies as such because it is constantly and immediately accessible to Otto, and it is automatically endorsed by him.
   Racing thoughts differs in manifestation according to the individual's perspective. These manifestations can vary from unnoticed or minor distractions to debilitating stress, preventing the sufferer from maintaining a thought.
   People use explicit memory throughout the day, such as remembering the time of an appointment or recollecting an event from years ago. Explicit memory involves conscious recollection, compared with implicit memory which is an unconscious, unintentional form of memory. Remembering a specific driving lesson is an example of explicit memory, while improved driving skill as a result of the lesson is an example of implicit memory.
   While all of these techniques can be useful to cope with racing thoughts, it may prove necessary to seek medical attention and counsel. Since racing thoughts are associated with many other underlying mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, and ADHD, medications used commonly to treat these disorders will help calm racing thoughts in patients.
   Hemispheric differences within the hippocampus are also observed. A study on London taxi drivers, asked drivers to recall complex routes around the city as well as famous landmarks for which the drivers had no knowledge of their spatial location. This resulted in an activation of the right hippocampus solely during recall of the complex routes which indicates that the right hippocampus is used for navigation in large scale spatial environments.
   Risk versus reward analysis is an important part of decision making. Attempting to create a representation and response to a risky situation highly involves the orbitofrontal cortex. In a study that involved risk taking analysis of drivers who had been driving for 12 hours straight, it was found that they were more willing to make hazardous maneuvers and were reluctant to adopt any form of a cautious driving style.
   Horrey and Wickens (2003) consider the questions: To what extent will a secondary task interfere with driving performance, and does it depend on the nature of the driving and on the interface presented in the second task? Using a model based on "multiple resource theory" (Wickens, 2002, 2008; Navon & Gopher, 1979), which proposes that there are several loci for multiple-task interference (the stages of processing, the codes of processing, and modalities), the researchers suggest that cross-task interference increases proportional to the extent that the two tasks use the same resources within a given dimension: Visual presentation of a read-back task should interfere more with driving than should auditory presentation, because driving itself makes stronger demands on the visual modality than on the auditory.
   Contrary to what may be popularly assumed, racing drivers as a group do not have unusually better reflexes or peripheral response time. During repeated physiological (and psychological) evaluations of professional racing drivers, the two characteristics that stand out are racers' near-obsessive need to control their surroundings (the psychological aspect), and an unusual ability to process fast-moving information (physiological). In this, researchers have noted a strong correlation between racers' psychological profiles and those of fighter pilots. In tests comparing racers to members of the general public, the greater the complexity of the information processing matrix, the greater the speed gap between racers and the public .
   Supporters of extended cognition have used Clark's comparison between Inga and Otto as a champion analogy to support the theory of the internal mind extending into the environment. In an article on the argument of extended cognition, Erik Myin makes note of this group, "a close causal coupling between persons and environments," such as Otto and his notebook, "can license the conclusion that the mind spreads into the environment." His also writes that some followers use Clark's argument of, "external elements" playing a role that could be seen as, "cognitive if played by something internal to a person." A good reference to this would be how Otto's notebook is used for cognitive verification.
   Section::::Mental state understanding.
   One of the main application domains of neuroergonomics is driving safety, especially for older drivers with cognitive impairments. Driving requires the integration of multiple cognitive processes, which can be studied separately if the right kinds of tools are used. The types of tools used to evaluate cognition during driving include driving simulators, instrumented vehicles, and part task simulators.
   Section::::Research on supervisory attentional system.:Parkinson's disease (PD).
  
  Patients with Parkinson's disease had trouble inhibiting habitual tendencies, constructing new responses, and produced more errors. They showed similar performance to controls on allocating attention and resources of working memory. PD patients also showed impairments in verbal fluency and took longer to respond on tasks. Early, untreated PD patients had the most severe impairment to the SAS, however only certain processes are affected. Treatment substantially improved PD patients' cognitive control.
  
  The influence of Parkinson's disease on the SAS are consistent with those found for carbon monoxide poisoning, and both confirm frontal lobe dysfunctions.
   It was found that subjects in the experimental group were impaired while performing rule-based tasks, but not information-integration ones. After statistical testing, it was also hypothesized that the brain began using information-integration techniques to solve the rule-based learning tasks. Since rule-based tasks use the hypothesis-testing system of the brain, it can be concluded that the hypothesis-testing system of the brain was damaged/weakened. It is known that the caudate and working memories are part of this system. Therefore, it was confirmed that the putamen is involved in category learning, competition between the systems, feed-back processing in rule-based tasks, and is involved in the processing of pre-frontal regions (which relate to working memory and executive functioning). Now it is known that not only the basal ganglia and caudate affect category learning.
   In this regard, the theory expands on research that has illustrated the role of memory representations in reasoning processes, the intersection of which has been previously underexplored. However, it should be noted that in certain circumstances, FTT predicts independence between memory and reasoning, specifically between reasoning tasks that rely on gist representations and memory tests that rely on verbatim representations. An example of this is research between the risky choice framing task and working memory, in which better working memory is not associated with a reduction in bias.
   Section::::Neurology.:Executive control model.
  
  The executive control model argues that thought insertion may be mediated by altered activity in motor planning regions, specifically the supplementary motor area. In one experiment, reduced connectivity between the supplementary motor area and motor implementation regions during suggested involuntary compared to voluntary movements was observed.
  
  Section::::Treatment.
   Parkinson's Disease is known to affect selective areas in the frontal lobe area of the brain. Current scientific information suggests that the memory performance problems notably shown in patients are controlled by unusual frontostriatal circuits. Parkinson's patients often have difficulty with the sequence-specific knowledge that is needed in the acquisition step of procedural memory. Further evidence suggests that the frontal lobe networks relate to executive function and only act when specific tasks are presented to the patient. This tells us that the frontostriatal circuits are independent but able to work collaboratively with other areas of the brain to help with various things such as paying attention or focusing.
   This has significant implications for the real world. If we can better understand what parts of the brain are intimately connected, we can predict the effect of localized brain injury. For example, if a patient has a stroke in the amygdala, primarily responsible for emotion, the patient might also have trouble learning to perform certain tasks because the amygdala is highly interconnected with the orbitofrontal cortex, responsible for reward learning. As always, the first step to solving a problem is fully understanding it, so if we are to have any hope of fixing brain injury, we must first understand its extent and complexity.
  