Cognitive Neuroscience at Tech Research Laboratory

08/13/2014

Congratulations to Savannah Cookson, a graduate student in our lab, for successfully defending her Master's thesis yesterday!

08/08/2014

In place of our False Fact Friday, we have a...

New Study Announcement!

1207 - Task Representation in Relational and Independent Sets

How do we combine distinct movements into goal-based behavior? What brain regions are involved? Help us find out by participating in a Magnetic resonance imaging research experiment investigating this phenomenon. During this experiment, you will try to respond as quickly and accurately as possible to stimuli presented on the screen. Your reaction times and accuracy for these tasks will be measured.

This experiment consists of 2 sessions, both approximately 1 hour. You will be awarded one credit hour or $10 per hour of participation, for a maximum of 2 credit hours or $20. Must be at least 18 years old, right handed, and have normal or corrected-to-normal vision. For more information, please see our website or email us at CoNTRoLGT@gmail.com!

07/29/2014

Our lab has published a new journal article! Check it out in Nature Communications.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140729/ncomms5567/full/ncomms5567.html

( b ) Log tweet frequency as predicted from the scene-by-scene neural reliability measured across 16 participants during subsequent viewing of the episode in the laboratory (see equation (4) in Methods).

07/28/2014

Are you looking for a research assistanceship in Psychology at Georgia Tech? Check out this announcement from the CASA Lab!

We are always glad to hear from people interested in helping with our research! Our research assistants work on projects and tasks closely matching their interests and skills, and are actively involved in research efforts throughout the project life cycle. As a … Continue reading →

07/25/2014

False Fact Friday!

To make up for some missed FFFs these past few weeks, here's a video by AsapSCIENCE that discusses seven different myths about the brain. Did any surprise you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfgkAJmp9-A =149

Blow your mind with these brain myths! Check out GE Reports: http://invent.ge/1r0kSnG SUBSCRIBE! It's Free: http://bit.ly/10kWnZ7 ---Links to follow us below...

07/23/2014

Hump Day Highlight: The Optic Chiasm!

The visual system is one of the most well-understood senses in the body. Visual information in the form of light is taken in and turned into neural signals by your eyes. These signals are then passed to the brain, which processes the information into what we "see".

However, the actual pathway is more convoluted than it sounds! For one thing, visual information is processed not in the front of the brain, where the eyes are located, but in the BACK of the brain, in what is called the occipital lobe. Furthermore, before visual information gets to your occipital lobe, it goes through a number of structures and transformations.

One of the most striking of these transformations occurs at a structure called the optic chiasm (kai-az-um). At this point, the two bundles of neurons bringing information from each eye converge together in an "X" shape (Χ in the Greek alphabet is "chi" - hence the name CHIasm!) before splitting apart again on their journey to the back of the brain. At the chiasm, about 90% of neurons from each eye bundle actually cross to the other side. Therefore, almost all of the information from your left eye ends up at the right side of the brain and vice versa!

This is one of many examples of neurons crossing hemispheres in the brain. The phenomenon is called contralaterality, and can be found in auditory, motor, pain, and other systems. Why do you think that so many systems in the brain show contralaterality?

See the video below for an in-depth look at the visual system!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-_8PEDNUy4

eye vision brain

07/08/2014

New Study Announcement!

How do attention and performance affect cognitive processes? Help us find out by participating in a research experiment investigating this question.

During this experiment, you will view images of faces and shapes on a computer, and you will respond to each of these images using different sets of instructions. You will also perform a memory test on the faces you view during the experiment. Your reaction times and accuracy for these tasks will be measured.

To be eligible for this study, you must be:
1) 18 years of age or older
2) right handed
3) have normal or corrected-to-normal vision

The total experiment will take no longer than 1.5 hours. Participants may receive $10 or 1 SONA credit per hour for their participation. Please contact CoNTRoLGT@gmail.com or see our website for more information.

06/24/2014

Ever heard of a point-light display? Cognitive neuroscientists (among others!) use these displays to investigate motion perception. The BioMotion Lab under Dr. Niko Troje have developed an interactive system to show how just 15 dots moving in certain ways can indicate a number of characteristics about the walker. Try the demo at the link below; check out the "More" button to create your own walker dimension as well!

http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html

06/05/2014

As of today our page has passed 1,000 likes! We are so glad to see that people are interested in what we do. But what part of cognitive science most interests YOU? Leave a comment with a topic you would like to see us cover in the future!

06/04/2014

Hump Day Highlight: MRI Machines!

Much of our research uses an MRI machine to take various images of brains and bodies. But what is the machine itself?

An MRI is essentially a massive magnet. Modern MRI magnet strengths can be anywhere between 1.5 and 9 Tesla. For comparison, the Earth’s magnetic field is just 30 microtesla, or .00003 Tesla - that means the MRI field is about 100,000 times stronger than the Earth’s! Basic magnets like the ones that come in toys or stick on your refrigerator could never be this strong even at the size of the MRI. Instead, the MRI uses a superconducting material that is cooled to temperatures under -400ºF using liquid helium. When the material is brought to this temperature, special properties of the material cause it to become powerfully magnetic.

To take the images of your brain, we use a radio frequency system. This system transmits electromagnetic waves at very slow, low energy wavelengths. When these waves collide with particles in the body, typically water or hemoglobin, they cause a select few atoms to be “excited”, effectively giving them a tiny bit of extra energy for a brief period. These excited atoms then release this extra energy as a similar electromagnetic wave when they return to the baseline, or “ground state”. The radio frequency system can record this released wave among the many others released after excitation.

To make the images make sense in 3-D space, we use a second magnet, called the gradient magnetic field. This field can be turned on and off in rapid cycles to produce different magnetic field strengths in different locations. This causes different amounts of energy to be released by particles in different places in the brain. We can then use our knowledge of what energy levels were applied in what places to determine which signals came from which locations. These three components together, then, are able to produce the 3-dimensional images you see in an MRI image.

Check out just how strong an MRI magnetic field can be, and what happens when you take metal near the scanner, in the video below! If you are having trouble imagining how much force they are measuring, consider this: 300 pounds of force applied to the side of the wrench in the video would be similar to a grizzly bear sitting on the end of a pencil!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBx8BwLhqg

UPDATE: Questions about why we were doing what we were doing? Please see the FAQ under "MRI magnet quench: the movie." That video is also entertaining, btw. ...

06/03/2014

In case you missed it last Fall, here is the UCSD Neuro Program SFN Social Promo that went viral. Enjoy a quick dance break at the bench!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfhSLTQTLhI&feature=kp

Need a break from data? Come to the UCSD Neurosciences Graduate Program Social at SfN! For details, see this link: http://tinyurl.com/UCSDSfN Monday, Novembe...

06/02/2014

New Study Announcement!

How does your brain process images of faces and places?
Help us find out by participating in a research MRI experiment. You will view pictures of faces and outdoor places, and be asked to make judgments about how pleasant each image is.

To be eligible for this study, you must be:
1) 18 years of age or older
2) right handed
3) have normal or corrected-to-normal vision
4) have no neurological or psychiatric disorders

The total experiment session will take no longer than 2.5 hours. Participants will receive $10 per hour for their participation. Please contact CoNTRoLGT@gmail.com or go to our website for more information.