Wiebo H Brouwer

University of Groningen | RUG · Department of Psychology

In 2020, more than 600 people died as a result of a traffic crash in the Netherlands and 6,500 were hospitalized after they had sustained a serious injury (MAIS 3+). These numbers are much lower than those in the beginning of the seventies of the last century, when there were more than 3,000 road fatalities. To reduce the number of fatalities, many...

Background/objective: Neurodegenerative disorders impact fitness to drive of older drivers, but on-road driving studies investigating patients with different neurodegenerative disorders are scarce. A variety of driving errors have been reported in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), but it is unclear which types of driving errors occur most fr...

Zelfstandige mobiliteit is belangrijk om mee te kunnen doe in onze maatschappij. Veel mensen met een visuele beperking zijn aangewezen op het langzaam gemotoriseerde verkeer (LGV), omdat ze bijvoorbeeld geen auto meer mogen rijden. Voor langzaam gemotoriseerde voertuigen gelden geen wettelijke visuele eisen. Het gebruik van een brommobiel (45 km-au...

Since Alzheimer’s disease may affect driving performance, patients with Alzheimer’s disease are assessed on fitness to drive. On-road driving assessments are widely used, and attempts have also been made to develop strategies to assess fitness to drive in a clinical setting. Preferably, a first indication of fitness to drive is obtained quickly aft...

Background: Driving is related to social participation; therefore older drivers may be reluctant to cease driving. Continuation of driving has also been reported in a large proportion of patients with cognitive impairment. The aim of this study is to investigate whether patients with cognitive impairment adhere to driving cessation advice after a f...

Purpose: To compare different driving parameters between visually impaired people and normal sighted controls in a mobility scooter and microcar driving simulator. Materials and methods: A mobility scooter and microcar driving simulator and different virtual environments were developed for the purpose of this experiment. Participants completed 4 dr...

Als automobilisten dementie krijgen, rijst de vraag of zij nog rijgeschikt zijn. Dit dient per patiënt onderzocht te worden met een rijtest van het Centraal Bureau Rijvaardigheidsbewijzen (CBR). De stap van de dementiediagnose naar de rijtest op de weg is echter groot, daarom is er recentelijk een klinisch rijgeschiktheidsonderzoek ontwikkeld. Met...

In tegenstelling tot het autorijden bestaan er voor langzaam gemotoriseerde voertuigen (LGV) geen wettelijke visuele eisen. Dit biedt mensen met een visuele beperking aan de ene kant de mogelijkheid om mobiel te blijven, maar aan de andere kant is het ook belangrijk om veilige verkeersdeelname te waarborgen. Binnen het project Mobility4all werd er...

Dementia is a risk factor for unsafe driving. Therefore, an assessment strategy has recently been developed for the prediction of fitness to drive in patients with the Alzheimer disease (AD). The aim of this study was to investigate whether this strategy is also predictive of fitness to drive in patients with non-AD dementia, that is, vascular deme...

Presentation of results of our scientific reseach on driving ability and practical fitness to drive of visually impaired people in slow motorised vehicles

Purpose: To investigate how well visually impaired individuals can learn to use mobility scooters and which parts of the driving task deserve special attention. Materials and methods: A mobility scooter driving skill test was developed to compare driving skills (e.g. reverse driving, turning) between 48 visually impaired (very low visual acuity = 1...

Objective: To investigate practical fitness to drive mobility scooters, comparing visually impaired participants with healthy controls. Design: Between-subjects design. Subjects: Forty-six visually impaired (13 with very low visual acuity, 10 with low visual acuity, 11 with peripheral field defects, 12 with multiple visual impairment) and 35 n...

Introduction People with homonymous visual field defects (HVFD) often report difficulty detecting obstacles in the periphery on their blind side in time when moving around. Recently, a randomized controlled trial showed that the InSight-Hemianopia Compensatory Scanning Training (IH-CST) specifically improved detection of peripheral stimuli and avoi...

Individual-level data. (XLSX)

Hemianopsie is een veelvoorkomende visuele stoornis bij verworven hersenletsel. Hemianopsie kan grote gevolgen hebben voor het dagelijks leven. Wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar hemianopsie en naar de effecten van revalidatieprogramma’s richt zich echter doorgaans niet op dagelijkse activiteiten. Dit artikel beoogt de wetenschappelijke kennis en de k...

Presentatie van Christina Cordes tijdens de netwerkdag van Mobility4All en het KennisNetwerk Langzaam Gemotoriseerd (KNLGV) te Groningen. Uitkomsten van het onderzoek naar praktische rijgeschiktheid van slechtziende mensen in een scootmobiel.

Presentatie over de resultaten van het onderzoek naar de rijprestatie van slechtziende mensen in een brom- en scootmobielsimulator (5-45 km/uur)

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134459.].

Individual-level data. (XLSX)

Objectives. There is no consensus yet on how to determine which patients with cognitive impairment are able to drive a car safely and which are not. Recently, a strategy was composed for the assessment of fitness to drive, consisting of clinical interviews, a neuropsychological assessment, and driving simulator rides, which was compared with the ou...

The number of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is increasing and so is the number of patients driving a car. To enable patients to retain their mobility while at the same time not endangering public safety, each patient should be assessed for fitness to drive. The aim of this study is to develop a method to assess fitness to drive in a clinic...

Protocol. (DOCX)

In onze maatschappij neemt zelfstandige gemotoriseerde mobiliteit een belangrijke rol in. Het onvermogen om zich zelfstandig voort te bewegen kan negatieve gevolgen hebben voor de levenskwaliteit van betreffende personen. Scootmobielen helpen mensen met motorische problemen om deel te nemen aan het dagelijkse leven. Er bestaan veel onduidelijkheden...

In a general sense Traffic Medicine in the Netherlands concerns multidisciplinary research about how to reduce traffic crashes and injuries following a "systems approach". Several universities and research institutes are involved, including the SWOV research institute of traffic safety( 1). In a specific sense Traffic Medicine in the Netherlands co...

Presentation of the results of our scientific study on the practical fitness to drive of visually impaired people in mobility scooters

Introduction Homonymous visual field defects (HVFD) are a common consequence of postchiasmatic acquired brain injury and often lead to mobility-related difficulties. Different types of compensatory scanning training have been developed, aimed at decreasing consequences of the HVFD by changing visual scanning. Aim The aim of the present study is to...

Older drivers with dementia are an at-risk group for unsafe driving. However, dementia refers to various aetiologies and the question is whether dementias of different aetiology have similar effects on driving ability. The literature on the effects of dementia of various aetiologies on driving ability is reviewed. Studies addressing dementia aetiol...

Homonymous visual field defects (HVFD) are common after postchiasmatic acquired brain injury and may have a significant impact on independent living and participation in society. Vision-related difficulties experienced in daily life are usually assessed using questionnaires. The current study 1) links the content of 3 of these questionnaires to the...

An advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) provided information about the right of way regulation and safety to cross an upcoming intersection. Effects were studied in a longer-term study involving 18 healthy older drivers between the ages of 65 and 82 years and 18 healthy young drivers between the ages of 20 and 25 years. Participants repeatedly...

In onze maatschappij neemt zelfstandige gemotoriseerde mobiliteit een belangrijke rol in. Het onvermogen om zich zelfstandig voort te bewegen kan negatieve gevolgen hebben voor de levenskwaliteit van betreffende personen. Doordat aan het autorijden minimale visuele eisen verbonden zijn, ervaren visueel beperkte mensen restricties in hun zelfstandig...

Purpose: To study driving performance in people with homonymous hemianopia (HH) assessed in the official on-road test of practical fitness to drive by the Dutch driver's licensing authority (CBR). Methods: Data were collected from a cohort (January 2010-July 2012) of all people with HH following the official relicensure trajectory at Royal Dutch...

Objective: An advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) provided information about speed limits, speed, speeding, and following distance. Information was presented to the participants by means of a head-up display. Methods: Effects of the information on speed and headway control were studied in a longer-term driving simulator study including 12 r...

Homonymous visual field defects (HVFDs) are a common consequence of posterior brain injury. Most patients do not recover spontaneously and require rehabiliation. To determine whether a certain intervention may help an individual patient, it is necessary to predict the patient's level of functioning and the effect of specific training. We provide an...

There is ample evidence that physical and cognitive performance are related, but the results of studies investigating this relationship show great variability. Both physical performance and cognitive performance are constructs consisting of several subdomains, but it is presently unknown if the relationship between physical and cognitive performanc...

Within the next few decades, the number of older drivers operating a vehicle will increase rapidly (Eurostat, 2011). As age increases so does physical vulnerability, age-related impairments, and the risk of being involved in a fatal crashes. Older drivers experience problems in driving situations that require divided attention and decision making u...

Neglect patients typically fail to explore the contralesional half-space. During visual scanning training, these patients learn to consciously pay attention to contralesional target stimuli. It has been suggested that combining scanning training with methods addressing non-spatial attention might enhance training results. In the present study, a du...

An advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) supported drivers at intersections providing information about gap sizes to cross. Effects were studied in a longer-term driving simulator study including 12 repeated measures spread out over one month. Nine healthy older drivers (65 to 82 years) making up one group and nine older drivers diagnosed with P...

Various authors have referred to an association between neglect and non-spatial components of attention. It has been suggested that an increase in attentional load could exacerbate neglect symptoms and reveal subtle, well-compensated neglect. In the present study, 21 RH and 22 LH subacute stroke patients and 20 controls performed a computerized sin...

Met de vergrijzing van de bevolking neemt het aandeel in het verkeer van automobilisten boven de 70 jaar gestaag toe. Hierdoor zal het aantal automobilisten met cognitieve functiestoornissen als gevolg van leeftijdsgebonden beperkingen en aandoeningen waaronder dementie, op de weg toenemen. Het doel van dit onderzoek was om de neuropsychologische s...

Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) is considered to be responsible for increased collision rate and impaired driving simulator performance in Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS) patients. Periodic Limb Movement Disorder (PLMD) patients also frequently report EDS and may also have impaired driving capacities. PLMD patients (n=16), OSAS patients...

Impairments in executive functions are frequently reported in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, little is known about patients' experience regarding these impairments. This knowledge is crucial because if patients do not experience their cognitive impairments they do not report them to their attending neurologist. Consequently, patients might not...

Impairments in executive functioning are frequently observed in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, executive functioning needed in daily life is difficult to measure. Considering this difficulty the Cognitive Effort Test (CET) was recently developed. In this multi-task test the goals are specified but participants are free in their approach. This s...

In this study, we describe a 58-year-old male patient (FZ) with a right-amygdala lesion after temporal lobe infarction. FZ is unable to recognize fearful facial expressions. Instead, he consistently misinterprets expressions of fear for expressions of surprise. Employing EEG/ERP measures, we investigated whether presentation of fearful and surprise...

Impairments in executive functions (EF) in Parkinson's disease (PD) will have a negative influence on daily life. For the assessment objective and subjective measurement approaches are used. It is however unknown whether these approaches contribute in a different way to the assessment of EF in PD. Thirty-nine PD patients and 24 healthy participants...

Nystagmus is a condition in which the eyeballs make involuntary movements. It is often accompanied by low visual acuity. In the Netherlands, nystagmus is a reason why people with visual acuity (slightly) below 20/40 (Snellen equivalent 0.5) are currently excluded from bioptic telescope driver training because in the experience of on road driving ex...

We describe a patient (JS) with impaired recognition and distorted visual perception of faces after an ischemic stroke. Strikingly, JS reports that the faces of family members look distorted, while faces of other people look normal. After neurological and neuropsychological examination, we assessed response accuracy, response times, and skin conduc...

It has been hypothesized that cerebral lateralization of function enhances cognitive performance. Evidence was found in birds and fish. However, recent research in humans did not support this hypothesis. We aimed to replicate and extend these findings for single- and dual-task performance in an ecologically relevant task. We combined a word generat...

Europe consists of 50 different countries and has an enormous variety in cultural history, language, landscape, climate, and economical situation, also reflected in large differences between traffic systems and traffic safety characteristics. Although traffic fatalities drastically decreased over in the last 20 years, the high number of crashes and...

The Problem. Very severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) can cause persistent functional limitations in visual-motor and cognitive functions which may have consequences for fitness to drive. On-road driving performance in this population is significantly related to performance on neuropsychological tests of attention and information processing. This p...

This paper deals with the issue of fitness to drive in patients suffering from traumatic brain injury (TBI). Guidelines for assessment are proposed and three types of studies are reviewed: studies about impairments of attention and information processing, studies of driving competence, and driver selection studies, applying and evaluating the proce...

Acute medical care for the severely brain injured has improved greatly in the last two decades. Many survivors of brain injury can now regain a degree of independence and re-establish a social life. Cognitive rehabilitation can facilitate the long and demanding process of recovery, training patients to reduce their limitations and helping them and...

A multicenter randomized control trial (RCT) was conducted to evaluate the effects of a treatment for dysexecutive problems after acquired brain injury (ABI) on daily life functioning. Seventy-five ABI patients were randomly allocated to either the experimental treatment, multifaceted strategy training for executive dysfunction, or a control treatm...

De ziekte van Parkinson kenmerkt zich door een progressieve degeneratie van dopamine producerende neuronen in de substantia nigra. Dit heeft een tekort aan dopamine in het striatum (putamen, nucleus caudatus en nucleus accumbens) en een disfunctioneren van de circuits tussen het striatum en de frontale cortex tot gevolg. De ziekte van Parkinson wor...

Background and aims: Many people with schizophrenia have severe cognitive impairments that hamper their activities. The effect of pharmacological and behavioural interventions on cognitive functioning has been demonstrated, but even after successful intervention considerable impairments can remain. Therefore, we sought for alternative ways to help...

Visual hallucinations (VHs) often occur in patients with advanced Parkinson disease (PD). Overstimulation of dopamine receptors has been considered as one of the causes for VHs in PD. However, several clinical studies suggested that apomorphine infusion did not worsen existing VHs in PD, but could even improve VHs in some PD patients. This pilot st...

Interest in neuropsychological testing in order to evaluate and predict driving performance in patients with homonymous hemianopia (HH) is growing. An earlier study found that visual performance during driving could be predicted by visuo-spatial neuropsychological test performance and that HH patients showed low to modest visuo-spatial performance,...

This study examined the extent to which driving performance of 10 older (70-88 years old) and 30 younger participants (30-50 years old) improves as a result of support by a driver assistance system. Various studies have indicated that advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) may provide tailored assistance for older drivers and thereby improve the...

Background: In Europe, driving a passenger car is prohibited if binocular best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) is below 0.5 (20/40). Some US states allow people with reduced visual acuity to use a bioptic telescope system when driving. The aim of our study is to introduce a bioptic telescope system for driving in the Netherlands and to investigate w...

Fifty-one subjects with visual field defects were trained to use compensatory viewing strategies.The subjects were referred to the training program by an official driving examiner of the Dutch Central Bureau of Driving Licenses. Three training programs were compared: laboratory training, mobility training, and motor traffic training. Viewing behavi...

Asymmetry in performance and an association with non-lateralized attention are often mentioned as two important aspects of the clinical manifestation of visuospatial neglect. Both these aspects were investigated in 21 left (LH) and 24 right hemisphere (RH) stroke patients and in 20 healthy subjects. The letter and star cancellation subtests of the...

The evidence with regard to impaired automatic and controlled information processing in non-demented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) is critically discussed. We use a comprehensive mental schema framework of executive functioning, that is the planning and regulation of behavior in complex everyday tasks (International Classification of Funct...

The objective of this study was to examine the unique contribution of social cognition to the prediction of community functioning and to explore the relevance of social cognition for clinical practice. Forty-six schizophrenia patients and 53 healthy controls were assessed with tests of social cognition [emotion perception and Theory of Mind (ToM)],...

Are there limits to the duration of high quality of life? Are there limits to healthy life for a human brain? We have had the opportunity to evaluate the performance of a 112-113-year-old woman and perform full pathological examination of her body immediately after death at the age of 115. The psychological tests revealed that her general performan...

Prior research on the nature of the vulnerability of neuroticism to psychopathology suggests biases in information processing towards emotional rather than neutral information. It is unclear to what extent this relationship can be explained by genetic or environmental factors. The genetic relationship between a neuroticism composite score and free...

BACKGROUND: In many states of the U.S.A., people with moderately reduced visual acuity e.g., 20/50 - 20/200) can legally drive with the aid of a small, spectacle-mounted ("bioptic") telescope. We conducted a demonstration project to assess the viability of implementing bioptic driving in The Netherlands. In this paper we describe the framework of t...

This paper aims to report on the perception of emotional prosody in schizophrenia and to discuss its relationship with performance on neurocognitive measures. It consists of a comparison of 20 clinically stable schizophrenia patients with 20 healthy controls. Schizophrenia patients were impaired in emotional prosody perception, in particular in the...

Impaired simulated driving performance has been demonstrated in obstructive sleep apnoea-hypopnoea syndrome (OSAHS) patients. Although continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) generally improves simulated driving performance, the effects of oral-appliance (OA) therapy are unknown. The aims of this study were to determine to what extent OSAHS pati...

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of short message service (SMS) text messages as a compensatory aid to improve independence in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and cognitive deficits. Design: An ABA withdrawal single-case experimental design was used. Eight men diagnosed with schizophrenia took part in the study; all demonstrated memory...

A lateral deviation of the walking trajectory is often observed in stroke patients with unilateral spatial neglect. However, existing research appears to be contradictory regarding the direction of this deviation. The aim of the present study was to gain more insight into the walking trajectory of neglect patients. Twelve right hemisphere stroke pa...

Interventions to promote successful aging include psychological and physical activity programs. Identification of determinants of attendance of older persons may be useful to develop strategies to improve attendance. For physical activity programs determinants of attendance have been investigated extensively. For psychological programs hardly any k...

In ageing populations fear of falling is an important issue. International studies and collaborations require scales suitable to more cultures. Scales developed in one culture require adaptation and additional investigation of psychometric properties for use in other countries. To investigate the psychometric properties of a Dutch version of the Ac...

The risk of recurrence in depressive disorder is high and increases with the number of episodes. We investigated whether individuals with a history of recurrent depression deviate from individuals with a single episode, as regards risk-related variables in 3 different domains of depression research. Participants were 102 outpatients with major depr...

Achtergrond:In onze vergrijzende maatschappij is valangst een belangrijk concept. Tot voor kort waren er in Nederland geen schalen beschikbaar waarmee valangst kan worden gemeten. Schalen ontwikkeld in andere landen moeten aangepast en opnieuw onderzocht worden voordat zij te gebruiken zijn in ons land. Doel:(1) Onderzoeken van de psychometrische...

Volunteer bias in intervention studies on successful aging has been poorly explored. This paper investigated differences between participants and non-participants of the Groningen Intervention Study on Successful Aging (GISSA) over a wide range of demographic, physical, psychological and social subject characteristics. Subjects were recruited among...

P300 latency variability in normal subjects limits its diagnostic applicability as a test for cognitive function. One of the causes of variation is the overlap in P300 (P3A and P3B) components resulting in inaccurate latency determination. Recently, we have shown that identification of P3A and P3B components using source analysis techniques signifi...

Degradation of major sensory systems such as proprioception, the vestibular system and vision may be a factor that contributes to the decline in walking stability in older people. In the present study this was examined by introducing a visual distortion by means of prism glasses shifting subject's view 10 degrees to the right while subjects walked...

P300 latency variability in normal subjects limits its diagnostic applicability as a test for cognitive function. One of the causes of variation is the overlap in P300 (P3A and P3B) components resulting in inaccurate latency determination. Recently, we have shown that identification of P3A and P3B components using source analysis techniques signifi...

To gain insight into the relation between changes in gait patterns over time and functional recovery of walking ability in stroke patients. Cohort study. Inpatient rehabilitation center of a university hospital in the Netherlands. Thirteen stroke patients admitted, or awaiting admission, for inpatient rehabilitation 3 weeks poststroke, and 16 healt...