Collaborative Research: Neuro-Cognitive Feedback to Enhance Engineering Design of Systems

工程设计是确保国家健康、繁荣和福祉的关键过程。工程设计中的一个重要步骤是产生新的想法。任何丰富这一步骤的东西都可以帮助改善有益于社会的结果。然而，在工程设计过程中，新想法的产生往往会提早达到顶峰，并随着时间的推移而下降。这可能会阻碍创新，因为工程师往往专注于旧的想法，而不是产生新的想法。为了帮助工程师保持产生新想法的能力，该项目将通过大脑激活的自我调节来测试一种新的解决方案。神经认知反馈测量大脑中血液流动的变化，并在计算机屏幕上以视觉方式将这些信息提供给设计师，设计师被要求通过自我调节保持大脑高度激活。神经认知反馈可以通过使隐藏的大脑状态的信息变得可访问来改善认知表现。神经认知反馈有可能帮助设计工程师更好地了解他们自己的表现能力，并帮助他们调整自己的思维方式。培养更多有自我意识的工程师，能够快速调整他们的心理方法，可以带来更多的创新解决方案和更熟练的问题解决者。本研究的目的是测试神经认知反馈对工程设计的影响。本研究项目将回答的问题是：(1)神经认知反馈对工程师产生的想法的流畅性和创造性有什么影响；(2)神经认知反馈对大脑激活有什么影响；(3)大脑激活与产生的想法类型有何关联？工程师将被随机挑选，接受关于他们自己的神经认知反馈，随机反馈，或不接受神经认知反馈。然后，每个工程师将被要求构思一个工程问题的设计解决方案。研究小组将测量随着时间的推移他们大脑中的激活模式，工程师开发的解决方案的数量，当他们开发这些解决方案时，以及专家小组评估这些解决方案的创造力。这个项目将导致对为什么神经认知反馈维持大脑激活的更好理解，并将为神经认知激活的自我调节如何影响设计提供新的见解。自律不是当前工程设计模型或理论的一部分。该项目的发现将扩展目前的理解，并为工程设计过程中发生的神经认知功能提供新的特征。该奖项反映了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。

Engineering design is a critical process to ensure national health, prosperity, and welfare. An important step during engineering design is the generation of new ideas. Anything that enriches this step can help improve outcomes that benefit society. However, the generation of new ideas tends to peak early and decline over time during the engineering design process. This can prevent innovation because engineers tend to fixate on older ideas instead of generating new ones. To help engineers sustain their ability to generate new ideas, this project will test a novel solution through the self-regulation of brain activation. Neuro-cognitive feedback measures change in blood flow in the brain and visually provides this information on a computer screen to designers, who are asked to keep their brain activation high through self-regulation. Neuro-cognitive feedback can improve cognitive performance by making information about hidden brain states accessible. Neuro-cognitive feedback has the potential to help design engineers better understand their own performance abilities and help them adjust their mental approach. Developing more self-aware engineers that can quickly adjust their mental approach can lead to more innovative solutions and more skilled problem-solvers.The goal of this research is to test the effects of neuro-cognitive feedback on engineering design. The questions that this research project will answer are: (1) what is the effect of neuro-cognitive feedback on the fluency and creativity of ideas generated by engineers; (2) what is the effect of neuro-cognitive feedback on brain activation; and (3) how does brain activation correlate with the types of ideas that are generated? Engineers will be randomly selected to receive neuro-cognitive feedback about themselves, random feedback, or no neuro-cognitive feedback. Each engineer will then be asked to ideate design solutions to an engineering problem. The research team will measure patterns of activation in their brain over time, the number of solutions the engineers develop, when they develop these solutions, and the creativity of these solutions assessed by a panel of experts. This project will lead to a better understanding about why neuro-cognitive feedback sustains brain activation and will offer new insight about how self-regulation of neuro-cognitive activation affects design. Self-regulation is not a part of current models or theories in engineering design. The findings from this project will extend current understanding and offer new characterizations of the neuro-cognitive functions that occur during the engineering design process.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.