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New imaging process to study human body/brain dynamics of subjects engaged in normal activity in ordinary room environments. The new project is being developed at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at UC San Diego and funded by U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research. It aims at developing a concurrent brain and body imaging modality MoBI (“Mobile Brain/Body Imaging”)

The Swartz Center Director Scott Makeig, the principal investigator of the project, said, "Although functional brain imaging has allowed many new insights into human brain function, so far no imaging modality has allowed scientists to study brain dynamics of subjects performing normal activities in a 3-D environment. The MoBI modality we are developing under this project will allow such studies for the first time." Makeig and colleagues propose to combine high-density, non-invasive electroencephalographic (EEG) or 'brainwave' recordings with full-body motion capture recording to explore the distributed brain dynamics that accompany and support natural human behavior, including interactions with objects, active agents, and other people.

Treadmill walking and running, pointing and reaching, balancing and juggling, route finding, gesturing and game playing are included experiments for Sub-projects of the research. Rafael Nunez, professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego, Daniel Ferris, University of Michigan, Kate Holzbaur of Wake Forest University, and Tzyy-Ping Jung of UCSD and National Chiao-Tung University in Taiwan are also involved in the project.

Jung and colleagues are also developing microelectronic brainwave processing systems that could soon be incorporated in wearable wireless MoBI systems.

Source: Barry Jagoda - University of California - San Diego