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，该环境将发展人类脑电(EEG)的能力，以分析用户与基于数字的体验的参与度。在这个项目中，用户将佩戴非侵入性的脑电耳机，同时在共享的虚拟世界中导航。从少数几个脑电系统开始，该团队将在项目过程中扩大规模，收集来自数十个用户的信号，为更大规模的研究提供基础。通过比较每个参与者在虚拟世界中的活动，以及与大脑活动和其他用户的活动，建立一个针对不同类型行为特征和主观状态的人脑活动模型。这将使人类感知、认知和情感状态的神经标记的开发、EEG信号的解析、EEG接口对新型体验的适用性得到显著改进，所有这些都可以增强远程学习、协作分布式工作、改进的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来提高确定个人认知状态的能力，该方法利用数字模拟中的事件状态的比较脑电分析和数据分析。将大规模数据分析方法引入在线虚拟世界情景环境中的许多用户，将创造一种新的方法，利用脑电分析来推断人类的主观体验。利用从分布式无线脑电仪器收集的数据实时进行这一分析的必要性将为利用加速混合多核技术来应对这一领域提供动力。该项目的结果将适用于各种数字环境，包括计算机辅助学习和培训、数字媒介协作工作环境、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。该项目将改进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。私人投资促进机构将培训和雇用不同的参与者，使其参与这些活动。作为加州大学圣迭戈分校一所全国公认的初高中普赖斯学校实习计划的一部分，加州大学圣迭戈分校的教职员工将指导高三学生在研究实验室中为这些学生提供宝贵的经验。此外，密歇根州立大学为少数族裔学生(主要是非裔美国人)实施了非常成功的迈耶霍夫项目，每年50多名学生中有90%以上进入科学或工程研究生院学习。这些学生中的许多人都是计算机科学专业的学生，他们曾选修过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.