The Neuroscience of Everyday World- A novel wearable system for continuous measurement of brain function

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Innovations in human neuroimaging tools have driven profound advances in our understanding of brain function under well-controlled and constrained conditions. While we are gaining greater understanding of how the brain functions in single-snapshot experiments under restricted lab settings, we do not know how it works in dynamic, complex and multisensory real-world environments. The goal of this project is to build a portable, miniaturized, lightweight, high-density wearable combined – functional Near Infrared-Spectroscopy (fNIRS) – Electro-Encepholography (EEG) - Eye-tracking system for enabling “Neuroscience of the Everyday World (NEW)” by permitting long duration continuous monitoring of normal / altered brain activity during movement, perception, and social interaction in real time and in the real world. In Aim 1, We will (A) develop a wearable and fully hybrid high-density EEG-fNIRS system that supports autonomous long-term recordings (>6 hours), (B) develop combined and miniaturized active EEG-Electrodes / fNIRS-Optodes; and (C) integrate the wearable system with Tobii Pro 2 eye-tracking/scene-camera glasses and state- of-the-art computer vision for adaptive acquisition and automated data annotation. In Aim 2, we will measure brain activity during walking, perceiving, and interacting, with experiments gradually increasing in complexity through three phases from lab to real world settings in young healthy adults and conduct a proof of principle in two sample clinical populations. In Aim 3, we will create an analysis workflow for data collected in Aim 2 that will accomplish the following: (1) removing nuisance signals from fNIRS/EEG signals, (2) analysis of multimodal fNIRS/EEG and behavioral data, (3) automatic annotation of and adaptation for real world measurements. This project brings together engineers, scientists and clinicians with the goal of building the next generation of imaging tools to capture brain function in real time. With our technological sophistication, interdisciplinary focus, and ready access to well-characterized clinical populations, we are uniquely positioned to successfully develop, apply, and disseminate our NEW technology, and lay down a foundation upon which groundbreaking advances in our understanding of the links between brain activity and behavior will build.