STEM Summer Internship of 2018 (6/25-6/28)

This is the end of  our the Summer I 3SP internship. While, we accomplished what we set out to do; there's still a lot that needs to be done. Once we get our contract with brainmaster inc renewed we'll be back in business. Summer II starts Monday July 2nd and we're ready for it. PS: No Photos for this week!!!!

STEM Summer Internship of 2018 (6/18-6/21)

For week 5 we rapped up doing our presentation for the Summer 1 3SP internship, which was done in week 4. For the upcoming weeks we're looking to get our contract with Brainmaster renewed because we also received our 3rd renewal with the IRB board for 2018-2019 with a summary report. Some of our members are taking a 3SP minicourse on Technical Writing for Scientific Publication. Next week is the final week of the course, so we're looking forward to see fruits of their studies and how it modified the current state our research paper.

In this photo we our current and former Chief Research Associates Adelajda Turku and Alexander Thomas speaking about the Vision, Mission, and Values of the EEG Brainwave Team. With these things we will make a brochure and use them to give a belief summary of the research group for future participants. 

During the presentation I spoke on our agreement Brainmaster Inc (Not the most flatting photo. lol), how we able to acquire their Discovery DC amplifier and Infraslow Flutuation Trainings (ISF). What is the purpose of it in combination with the red qEEG cap? In addition, how the software worked and what are perimeters we as administrators follow? Including experimental procedures with the GAD-7 self-reporting forms and procedural steps we take to extract the data from the ISF sessions to get quantitative results.  

STEM Summer Internship of 2018 (6/11-6/14)

Presentation
The EEG project's Summer I internship presentation will take place on 6/14/2018. It will touch upon all of the pertinent developments mentioned in the past few blog posts. A major theme is still the establishment of a research infrastructure.

To comply with the rules of the summer internship we had create board with our general meeting times, faculty times, and location of where we are meeting. We met all expectations and had the lovely and talented Dorida Denas design our boards finishing touches. 

Paper Editing
With the Summer I internship comes the Technical Writing for Scientific Publications mini course, we decided to apply our newfound knowledge to a new version of last year's report. Grammatical changes and images are added to the paper and it will serve as a springboard into eventually getting our experiment published.

Here's the cover page and experimental results from the SARA algorithm we obtained.

Streamlining Training for new experimenters
We took a few major steps to allow new members of the project to grasp the procedure needed to collect data:

The local network required for the completion of forms no longer requires a knowledge of the command prompt to setup. Sadik made us a script that allows a novice to access the functionality of the raspberry pi. Thanks, Sadik.

We created setup tutorials for the physical attachment of electrodes and data collection for both ISF and QEEGs. (OpenBCI and BIOPac to follow)

STEM Summer Internship of 2018 (6/4-6/7)

In the third week of our internship, we began to explore the roots of the Bergen EEG project a bit by dusting off some of our old equipment. The picture  (left) shows some hardware that's affixed to a 3D Printed EEG cap. This cap was once used to measure changes in brainwaves after listening to piano with interlaced musical tones.



The software it uses is called OpenBCI. As it is open source software, we might be able to use it to achieve some temporary success with regards to working out new experimental paradigms. Both reinstating old hardware and expanding our possibilities will prop up the net data we collect.





We began to explore articles on a topic called thought translation. These are algorithms used to allow the disabled to spell out words or operate wheel chairs. There is evidence to suggest that a user can offer a purely cognitive input, that is: no verbal or somatic components would be needed to produce a binary input. The ultimate goal of this line of questioning would be to develop our own "cognitive alphabet" that might allow a user to issue complex commands with non-verbal, non-somatic means.





On a scale of one to ten, we have ten to accomplish. The previous screen shot is of our electronic forms, which we hope to bring into greater use in the coming data collection. Last semester, defaulting to physical paperwork occurred when the operation of our raspberry pi posed issues for our less initiated members. Our friends of the comp-sci influence helped streamline the process of operating the machine. This way, we can avoid redundant paperwork and having to print out new documents if we need to make any changes.




(by friends of the comp-sci influence, I mean mostly Sadik, as usual)




The never-ending paperwork story also continues as our ability to collect data in our existing paradigm is blocked entirely by the bureaucracy necessary to achieve a new code for our Discovery. We will continue to provide updates as they are available, but hopefully by next Thursday we have new data to collect through OpenBCI.

Speaking of old hardware, we also brought the BIOPAC out and tinkered with some labs around polygraphs, pulse, and respiration. The BIOPAC contains a wide swath of measurement apparatuses that might allow us to augment further data collection with new physiological variables.













(Pictured to the right is our electronic consent form)
To continue our data collection, we simply need the codes, and to get the codes, the BrainAvatar people need our payment. Once the OpenBCI and BIOPAC are both fully up and running, a little creativity and some pertinent research will allow us to produce some meaningful data in the short to mid term.