There is a study that looked at how the performace in solving certain cognitive/creative tasks is influenced by the backgroun color [1]. In short: to make people alert and to increase performance on detail oriented tasks use red; to get people in creative mode use blue. Lucky us our corporate desktop background is mainly blue! Perhaps this could be interesting for ambient colors, e.g. in the automotive context…
[1] Mehta, Ravi and Rui (Juliet) Zhu (2009), „Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances“ Science 27 February 2009:Vol. 323. no. 5918, pp. 1226 – 1229 DOI: 10.1126/science.1169144