Equipment: Acquisition of an EEG/eye tracking co-registration system to identify neurocognitive mechanisms of reading

这一重大研究仪器奖支持收购脑电(EEG)和眼睛跟踪设备，作为位于圣地亚哥州立大学(SDSU)的单一神经认知“共同注册”仪器。联合配准允许以毫秒的时间分辨率同时测量从头皮记录的大脑活动和在阅读(和其他视觉任务)期间进行的眼睛运动。同时记录眼睛和大脑测量的共同记录能力是一项相对较新的创新，它增强了对以眼睛行为和神经活动为索引的认知过程之间的联系的理解。EEG和眼球跟踪的联合配准在方法和概念上都具有挑战性，SDSU研究人员利用这一设备，通过应用不同的范式(例如，阅读、视觉搜索)并包括不同的人群(例如，聋人读者；失语症患者)，有助于推动这项技术的发展。此外，这项研究还有助于开发联合注册研究的最佳实践，并促进这项新技术在其他实验室的使用。通过由SDSU教员领导的ERP训练营，SDSU的学生以及来自其他机构的学生和教职员工有机会学习如何使用这种设备的基础知识。利用这一工具开展的研究项目还通过将聋人和听力障碍学生纳入研究和培训，扩大了科学和工程学中代表性不足群体的参与。此外，SDSU是一家服务于拉美裔美国人的机构，许多接受过这项新技术培训的学生都是拉丁裔、墨西哥裔或西班牙裔。静态阅读具有欺骗性的复杂性--它涉及一系列令人难以置信的错综复杂、精确计时的神经过程，这些过程迅速展开。对这些过程的理解有助于我们进一步了解对熟练阅读理解的最终目标至关重要的潜在机制。共同注册系统解决的一个关键问题是，聋人读者的副中凹文字处理如何受到聋人对视觉外围的更多关注的影响，这已被记录在案。共同配准系统能够使用自然句子阅读范式来识别聋人读者视觉空间注意分布的变化如何影响从副脑室提取语义和句法信息，以及阅读理解能力是否调节了这些影响。本研究的结果为提高聋人和听力人的阅读能力的教学和补救措施提供了翻译基础。其他研究项目包括调查语言处理的暂时延迟(例如，词汇通达)如何影响失语症患者的句子理解障碍，以及调查隐蔽和公开的注意机制，这些机制影响了患有精神疾病(例如，焦虑、抑郁和精神分裂症)的人在现实世界中如何受到情感刺激的分散注意力。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Major Research Instrument award supports the acquisition of electroencephalography (EEG) and eye tracking equipment to be used as a single neurocognitive “co-registration” instrument located at San Diego State University (SDSU). Co-registration permits the simultaneous measurement of brain activity recorded from the scalp and eye movements made during reading (and other visual tasks) with millisecond temporal resolution. The ability to co-register eye and brain measures recorded simultaneously is a relatively recent innovation that enhances understanding of the link between cognitive processes indexed by both eye behaviors and neural activity. Co-registration of EEG and eye-tracking is methodologically and conceptually challenging, and utilization of this equipment by SDSU researchers helps advance this technology by applying different paradigms (e.g., reading, visual search) and including diverse populations (e.g., deaf readers; aphasic patients). In addition, the research helps develop best practices for co-registration studies and promotes the use of this new technology in other labs. Through ERP Boot Camps led by SDSU faculty, SDSU students as well as students and faculty from other institutions whave the opportunity to learn the basics of how to use this equipment. The research projects conducted using this instrument also broaden the participation of under-represented groups in science and engineering by including deaf and hard-of-hearing students in the research and training. In addition, SDSU is a Hispanic-Serving Institution, and many of the students trained in this new technology are LatinX, ChicanX, or Hispanic.Skilled reading is deceptively complex – it involves an overlapping series of incredibly intricate, precisely timed, neural processes that unfold at a rapid rate. Understanding these processes advance our knowledge of the underlying mechanisms that are critical to the ultimate goal of skilled reading comprehension. A key question addressed with the co-registration system is how parafoveal word processing in deaf readers is impacted by the enhanced attention to the visual periphery that has been documented for deaf adults. The co-registration system enables the use of natural sentence reading paradigms to identify how changes in the distribution of visual spatial attention in deaf readers effects the extraction of semantic and syntactic information from the parafovea and whether reading comprehension ability modulates these effects. The results of this research provide a translational foundation for pedagogical and remediation approaches to improve reading abilities in both deaf and hearing individuals. Other research projects include the investigation of how temporal delays in language processing (e.g., lexical access) impact sentence comprehension impairments in individuals with aphasia and investigations of covert and overt attentional mechanisms that impact how emotional stimuli drive distraction in real world contexts for people with psychopathology (e.g., anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.