I/UCRC FRP: Collaborative Research: MDONS (Massively Distributed Online Neuroscience) for Improving Virtual Experience

该项目建议创建一个分布式、多用户的社会计算环境，该环境将开发人类脑电图（EEG）的能力，以分析用户与基于数字的体验的互动。在这个项目中，用户将在共享的虚拟世界中导航时佩戴非侵入式脑电图耳机。从少量的脑电图系统开始，该团队将在项目过程中扩大规模，从数十个用户那里收集信号，为更大规模的研究提供基础。通过将脑电图信号与虚拟世界中每个参与者的活动进行比较，并与大脑活动和其他用户的活动进行比较，建立不同类型的行为特征和主观状态的人类大脑活动模型。这将大大改善人类感知、认知和情感状态的神经标记物的开发，脑电图信号的解析，脑电图接口对新型体验的适用性，所有这些都可以增强远程学习、协作分布式工作、改进移动计算接口和医疗保健应用。该项目将通过创建新的计算方法，利用比较脑电图分析和数字模拟事件状态的数据分析，提高确定个人认知状态的能力。将大规模数据分析方法引入在线虚拟世界情境中许多用户的清晰模式，将创造一种利用脑电图分析推断人类主观体验的新方法。实时进行这种分析的必要性，以及从分布式无线脑电图仪器收集的数据，将为利用加速混合多核技术来承担这一领域提供动力。该项目的成果将适用于各种数字环境，包括计算机辅助学习和培训、数字媒介协同工作环境、复杂数据集的可视化以及基于数字的娱乐体验，如虚拟世界和电脑游戏。该项目将改善这些数字媒体环境的功能和结果，更好地调整它们以适应用户的认知状态。pi将培训和雇用各种各样的参与者参与这些活动。作为Preuss学校（加州大学圣地亚哥分校校园内一所全国认可的初中和高中）实习计划的一部分，加州大学圣地亚哥分校的教职员工指导高中毕业生在研究实验室为这些学生提供宝贵的经验。此外，UMBC还为少数族裔学生（主要是非裔美国人）实施了非常成功的Meyerhoff项目，每年超过50人的入学人数中，超过90%的人会进入科学或工程研究生院。这些学生中有许多是计算机科学专业的学生，他们选修了面向科学家和工程师的面向服务的计算研究生课程。

The project proposes to create a distributed, multi-user social computing environment that will develop the capabilities of human Electroencephalography (EEG) to analyze users engagement with digitally based experiences. For this project, users will wear non-invasive, EEG headsets while navigating a shared virtual world. Beginning with a handful of EEG systems, the team will scale up over the course of the project to gather signals from dozens of users, providing a basis for larger scale studies. By comparing the EEG signals with each participants activities in virtual world, and with the brain activity and the activities of other users, a model of human brain activity will be developed for different types of behavior profiles and subjective states. This will allow significant improvement for the development of neural markers of human perceptual, cognitive and affective states, the parsing of EEG signals, the applicability of EEG interfaces to new types of experiences, all of which can enhance distance learning, collaborative distributed work, improved mobile computing interfaces and health care applications. The project will advance the capabilities for determining an individuals cognitive state by the creation of new computing methods utilizing comparative EEG analysis and data analysis of event states in a digital simulation. Bringing methods of large scale data analysis to articulate patterns across many users in the situated milieu of the online virtual world will create a new method to utilize EEG analysis to infer human subjective experience. The necessity of conducting this analysis in real-time, with data gathered from distributed, wireless EEG instruments will provide the impetus for utilizing accelerated hybrid multi-core techniques to bear on this domain.The results from the project will be applicable for a variety of digital environments including computer aided learning and training, digitally mediated collaborative work environments, visualization of complex data sets, and digitally based entertainment experiences such as virtual worlds and computer games. The project will improve the functionality and outcomes of these digital media environments, better adjusting them to the cognitive states of the users. The PIs will train and employ a diverse body of participants to be involved in these activities. As part of an internship program at the Preuss School, a nationally recognized middle and high school on the campus of UCSD, UCSD faculty and staff mentor high school seniors to provide these students valuable experiences in a research laboratory. In addition, UMBC operates the very successful Meyerhoff program for minority students, primarily African-American, for which over 90% of a yearly entrance number of more than fifty go on to graduate school in science or engineering. Many of these students are computer science majors that have had the elective graduate course of Service Oriented Computing for Scientists and Engineers.