The laboratory has resources for doing high-density EEG and ERP acquisition and analysis for cognitive neuroscience research. The goal of the research is to understand the relation between cognitive activity and brain activity, with emphases on the development of attention, neuropsychological deficits in attention, and reading.
The laboratory is a cooperative venture involving several faculty in the Department of Psychology, Institute for Mind and Brain, Department of Communication Science and Disorders, at the University of South Carolina. This laboratory has two systems from the Electrical Geodesics Inc high-density EEG acquisition equipment and can record 128 channels of EEG, and BrainVision equipment for recording multiple changes of EEG, and a SR Research EyeLink 1000 for high resolution eye tracking for co-registered EEG/ERP and eye tracking. The laboratory also is equipped with the necessary software for doing EEG and ERP analysis, scalp potential and scalp current density topographical maps, and cortical source localization.
The laboratory uses the MRI resources of the McCausland Center for Brain Imaging (MCBI). The MCBI houses a Siemens 3T Trio MRI. Researchers in the EEG/ERP lab use the MRI to obtain structural and functional MRI recordings. The structural MRI’s are used for creating realistic head models for cortical source analysis, and for placing electrodes on the MRI scalp in anatomically realistic locations. The functional MRI’s are used to study brain activity during tasks; such tasks may be repeated in the EEG/ERP laboratory to get converging evidence and timing for cognitive neuroscience processes.
Multisensory Attention and Perception Lab (MAPL)
Jessica Green is the director of the Multisensory Attention Lab (MAPL). The MAPL has its EEG recording equipment in the High Density EEG/ERP lab. The overarching aim of our research is to understand the neural and psychological mechanisms of human attention and perception. We utilize a variety of behavioural and neuroimaging techniques to link brain activity to cognitive processes, including EEG, fMRI, and simultaneously-recorded EEG and fMRI. Previous lab research has focused on examining the similarities and differences in attentional processes in the visual and auditory modalities, as well as the invertigation of a variety of attentional processes within the visual domain. Current projects include examining the influence of attention on multisensory integration, the link between autism and multisensory processing, and attentional deficits in dyslexia. More information about MAPL’s current projects can be found at MAPL.
