[Bloominglabs-announce] EEG talk today at IU

[Jenett Tillotson]

This Cognitive Science Colloquium is about EEG and should be of interest to
makers. I know I've talked to several people at Bloominglabs about EEG and
I know a couple of our members have their own EEG devices.

Plus, I'm travelling and can't go. This talk is open to the public, so go
and then tell me all about it!

Jenett

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Our first Cognitive Science Colloquium Lecture of the semester is today,
September 24, 2012.  It will run from 4:00-5:00 PM in Psychology Room 101 at
1101 E. 10th St.

Speaker: Scott Makeig, University of California San Diego

Abstract: Electroencephalography (EEG), the recording of electric potentials
produced by the partial areal synchrony of electrical field activity in
cortical neuropile, was the earliest and is still the most widely known,
most portable, most relatively low-cost, and most non-invasive brain imaging
modality. However, for a variety of reasons until recently EEG imaging has
not received adequate attention from engineers and applied mathematicians to
the important question of how to extract more of its biologically and
psychologically relevant information. Today, neurologists still typically
review clinical EEG 'squiggles' by visual inspection alone, and most
psychophysiologists consider only peaks in scalp-recorded event-related
potential (ERP)  averages - by so doing ignoring 90-99% of the recorded EEG
signals. It is now generally accepted that spatiotemporal changes in EEG
activity patterns correlate with changes in cognitive arousal, attention,
intention, evaluation, and the like, thereby providing a high
temporal-resolution “window on the brain/mind.” However, the biological
mechanisms that link EEG patterns to these and other aspects of cognition
are not understood in much detail.  In the last two decades, more adequate
signal processing methods, made feasible by ever-faster computers, have
greatly increased the amount of meaningful information about brain / mental
function that can be mined from high-density EEG signals. My laboratory,
SCCN, continues to develop the open-source the EEGLAB signal processing
environment for Matlab (Delorme & Makeig, 2004) that in particular
implements use of EEG source imaging based on independent component analysis
(ICA) and time/frequency analysis. We are also working to develop a new
imaging modality, mobile brain/body imaging (MoBI), that combines portable
high-density EEG ('What the brain does.') with full-body motion capture, eye
gaze tracking, and behavioral response recording ('What the brain
controls?') to better understand and monitor what might be called our
'natural cognition' that guides and evaluated our naturally motivated
actions -- and interactions. Using MoBI, macroscopic changes in cortical
field synchrony, including interactions between multiple brain areas timed
precisely to our actions (and interactions), can be detected and modeled,
hopefully leading to better basic understanding of brain dynamics supporting
our daily living (and their pathologies). In coming years, as well, more
adequate, near real-time EEG signal processing for feature extraction and
state prediction or recognition, in combination with fast-developing
non-invasive, dry, wireless and wearable EEG and other biosensor systems,
will likely produce meaningful 3-D functional brain imaging and
brain-computer interface (BCI) applications for a wide range of purposes.
Thus EEG, the oldest brain imaging modality, is rapidly becoming a 'new' and
important imaging modality, both for basic neuroscience and for the quickly
evolving field of 'neurotechnology' applications.
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