A group of psychology professors received a grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents this summer for more than $100,000 to enhance equipment in the electroencephalogram neuroscience lab.
The grant also funds two eye tracker devices and an Event-Related Potential boot camp led by University of California in Davis psychology professor and author Steven Luck. The learning workshop aims to foster research in the EEG lab. Psychology professors Sean Lane, Melissa Beck, Megan Papesh, Alex Cohen, Matthew Calamia and Emily Elliott were awarded the grant.
The former dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Gaines Foster, authorized the funding of the original lab equipment in 2014, said psychology professor Sean Lane.
The EEG lab has a BioSemi 64-channel Event Related Potential system and an EyeLink system.
“In simpler terms, the EEG has a piece of equipment that measures brain activity responses,” Lane said, referring to the ERP system.
The equipment shows how a person responds to different activities and what brain activity is like before someone makes a decision.
EyeLink tracks eye patterns, what someone is looking at or if the participant is searching for something on the screen.
The EEG works by placing a cap on the participant’s head and inserting gel containing electrodes into the cap. EEG records electrical activity in the brain when the gel makes contact with the participant’s scalp.
The researcher is then able to see how the participants’ brain activity varies in response to images, quotes or videos shown on a screen.
“We are able to help our students become more involved in their education,” Lane said.
Graduate students, such as fifth-year cognitive and brain sciences doctoral student Rebecca Goldstein, also benefit from the grant, Lane said.
Goldstein participated in a project that simultaneously tracked the movement of multiple objects, such as several, quick-moving lights.
“Typically, you schedule time in the lab after you have worked out a project idea, then you use the lab to program the experiment, run the experiment…and sometimes to analyze the data,” Goldstein said in an email.
Psychology professors receive Regents grant for EEG neuroscience lab
October 7, 2015
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