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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 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 . 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 state and your heart is beating strong and fast, you will have more cardiac systoles, and that is going to impair your reaction time and ability to avoid objects,” she said.