Critical Refit and Upgrade to Electroencephalography Lab at University of Lethbridge

这项提议是为了更换和升级莱斯布里奇大学加拿大行为神经科学中心内的人类脑电(EEG)设施。我们的团队使用EEG来研究我们看到和听到时大脑的电活动是如何反应的。当视觉或听觉感觉事件发生在我们周围的世界时，我们的大脑通过处理主要感觉区域的输入来做出反应，并将“自下而上”的信息传递到其他大脑区域。然而，当视觉或听觉输入非常复杂或失真时，大脑也会预测这些感觉输入应该如何随着时间的推移而变化，并将这些“自上而下”的预测发送到主要区域以提供帮助。重要的是，我们要弄清楚这些“自下而上”和“自上而下”的信息流在大脑中是如何相互作用的，因为这是所有认知的基本过程，将有助于解释为什么感知随着人类的成长和年龄而变化，以及为什么认知障碍会发生。了解人类大脑如何将自上而下的预测与自下而上的证据相匹配，甚至将有助于我们理解生物大脑和人工神经网络之间的异同，这两个网络是人工智能的核心。我们使用虚拟现实和沉浸式显示器向研究参与者呈现逼真的感觉场景，同时用脑电测量他们的脑电活动。申请的EEG系统将取代一个已有12年历史的系统，该系统已到了生命周期的尽头，不再受到制造商的支持。所要求的系统包括更高分辨率的传感器和最先进的“移动”传感器，这将使我们能够在许多不同的现实世界环境中进行脑电研究。莱斯布里奇大学最近增加了一种磁共振成像(MRI)设备，可以让我们拍摄非常高分辨率的人脑图像。所要求的EEG系统将使我们能够合并EEG和MRI数据，以利用每个仪器的互补优势。这将使我们能够具体找出大脑中哪些区域参与感知和认知，以及这些区域如何相互沟通。

This proposal is to replace and upgrade the human electroencephalography (EEG) facility within the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge.  Our group uses EEG to study how electrical activity in the brain responds when we see and hear. When visual or auditory sensory events happen in the world around us, our brains respond by processing those inputs in primary sensory regions and passing along "bottom-up" information to other brain regions. However, the brain also makes predictions about how those sensory inputs should change over time, and it sends those "top-down" predictions to primary areas to help when the visual or auditory input is very complex or distorted. It is important that we figure out how those "bottom-up" and "top-down" streams of information interact in the brain, because it is a fundamental process underlying all of cognition and will help explain why perception changes as humans grow and age, and why cognitive disorders happen. Understanding how the human brain matches up top-down predictions with bottom-up evidence will even help us understand similarities and differences between biological brains and artificial neural networks that are at the heart of Artificial Intelligence. We use virtual-reality and immersive displays to present realistic sensory scenes to research participants while measuring their brain electrical activity with EEG. The requested EEG system will replace a 12 year old system that has reached its end-of-life and is no longer supported by the manufacturer. The requested system includes higher resolution sensors and also state-of-the-art "mobile" sensors that will let us do EEG research in many different real-world settings. The University of Lethbridge recently added a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) facility which allows us to take very high-resolution images of the human brain. The requested EEG system will enable us to merge EEG and MRI data to leverage the complementary strengths of each instrument. This will allow us to find out specifically which brain regions are involved in perception and cognition, and how those regions communicate with each other.