EEG and Event-Related Potentials in Undergraduate PsychologyLaboratories

该项目的目的是增强学生在研究人类大脑功能和行为之间的关系方面的科学探究体验。这一目标将通过将现代基于计算机的脑电图法，特别是事件相关电位的测量，纳入我们的生物和实验心理学实验室来实现。这一策略既基于此类方法在当代研究中的重要性，也基于学生对测量人脑事件并将其与行为相关联的高度兴趣。定制设计的软件包由一名工程师创建，该工程师已经与该项目进行了广泛的讨论，将使用LabVIEW编写。这种方法提供的软件不仅具有方便的用户界面，而且对我们的学生来说也很熟悉，因为大多数人以前都是用LabVIEW编程的。因此，我们将能够修改软件以满足不断变化的需求。刺激将通过第二个软件包的方式呈现，我们的学生也已经熟悉了这个软件包。计划进行实验，向学生介绍基本的事件相关电位范式--测量对预测刺激的运动反应之前的准备电位，以及由视觉刺激引发的P300成分的潜伏期或幅度。这些实验将在几个不同的课程中进行。由于学生通常会选择不止一个，他们将有机会充分掌握这些程序，以便能够在他们自己的高级研究项目中使用这些程序。有前途的二年级和三年级学生也将有机会与项目主管合作，利用这些方法进行实验。因此，这个项目将展示一种将这些当代神经心理学研究方法带入本科实验室的教学方法。

The purpose of the proposed project is to enhance the student's experience of scientific inquiry in the study of relationships between brain functions and behavior in humans. This goal will be achieved by incorporating contemporary computer-based electroecephalograpic methods, especially measurement of event-related potentials, into our laboratories in biological and experimental psychology. This strategy is based both on the importance of such methods in contemporary research and on the high level of student interest in measuring human brain events and correlating them with behavior. The custom-designed software package, created by an engineer with whom the project has already been extensively discussed, will be written using LabVIEW. This approach will provide software that not only has a convenient user interface, but is also familiar to our students because most will have previously programmed with LabVIEW. Therefore, we will be able to modify the software to address changing needs. Stimuli will be presented by means of a second software package, PsyScope, with which our students are also already familiar. Experiments are planned that introduce students to fundamental event-related potential paradigms - the measurement of the readiness potential preceding motor responses to a predicted stimulus and of the latency or magnitude of the P300 component elicited by visual stimuli. These experiments will be conducted in several different courses. Since students will generally take more than one of these, they will have the opportunity to master the procedures sufficiently to be able to employ them in their own senior research projects. Promising sophomore and junior students will also have the opportunity to work with the project director on experiments employing these methods. Thus, this project will demonstrate a pedagogical approach for bringing these contemporary neuropsychological research methods into undergraduate laboratories.