Physiology
Posters for Fall 22 and Spring 23
Despite the website being down for half of this academic year, much progress was made on my project this year. Click the icon to read the posters for the WISRD Physiology Group this year, as well as posters from past years.
Journal entries imported from the previous iteration of wisrd.org
PHYSIOLOGY
Physiology Lab
PI: Honor Dodd
WISRD’s Physiology Research Group is using the Emotiv Epoc-x head set to monitor brain waves of highschool, students to identify the early indicators of the onset of stress. We are working on designing a research project that would allow us to test the onset of adolescent stress, specifically in highschool students, to identify specific triggers for stress that would occur in a learning environment.
Contact: honord23@wildwood.org if you are interested in our lab
May 19, 2022
In WISRD, Canada decided to test the headset on a WISRD teacher. Changing the subject of the experiment enables us to conceive feedback around improving issues around setup. This rotation of candidates was helpful, as the teacher we tested gave feedback different from what we often observed. This alteration of the experiment helped me recognize 3 issues within my headset, disintegrating felt pads, too much saline, and problems with the rear sensors. To effectuate changes towards these issues, Honor, and Canada contacted the emotiv headquarters to get feedback about these matters. The feedback received from these sources helped us recognize issues that restricted us from running a stable lab. The work conducted towards improving lab conditions helped receive data. Canada successfully achieved running the emotiv headset, getting 100% EEG and connect quality in under 20 minutes. As she continued to run the headset, Canada encountered an assortment of issues derived from how she operated the headset. The first solution to 2/3 of these issues was leaving the sensors to dry. Honor and Canada conducted their methods on how to sustain the quality of the felt sensors. As they often got dry within the middle of us running the emotiv, we decided soaking them regularly would solve this issue. However, this caused the sensors to disintegrate, resulting in low EEG and connect quality. Cohesively, Honor and Canada researched how to sustain these sensors and came to a resolution of letting them dry. Once they let these sensors dry, the censors held their shape and didn’t cause any issues when running the headset. The second solution they discovered was deciphered by getting in contact with emotiv. The information received from emotiv headquarters informed them about the issues they encountered with the back sensors. In addition to the helpful precautions they informed us of, they provided solutions on how to fix this issue. Cohesively, the criticism they provided influenced us to apply less pressure while putting the felt pads in the sensors. Executing this step would further limit possible erosion, improving the quality surrounding EEG and connectivity. The issues we recognized and further solved helped us progress towards running emotiv games. Therefore, Canada has been running different emotiv games surrounding our research plan. As we are trying to locate indicators of stress within classrooms, we made connections with these games to scenarios seen within classroom environments. Currently, the Brainwaves group has successfully run all these games, receiving more data around our purpose. These graphs and connection information will further be used in our white paper, as it is the data behind what causes the onset of stress among high school students.
April 26, 2022
March 25, 2022
Create experiments -1: play an emotiv game when stress, and play the game again when calm. Compare the data results and make connections towards different types of stress conducted from this test 2: Play an emotiv game that has similarities towards situations seen in classrooms ex. Quick, timed thinking game can correlate towards a timed test 3: Candidates will perform a series of tests focused around activities that conduct stress. From there, we would compare these levels towards whether they exhibit eustress or distress.
Conduct information centered around our current discoveries and how we want to proceed from these discoveries.
Our recent tweet shows the first emotiv game. The data is currently correlated towards classroom assessments.
March 11, 2022
The WISRD Physiology Group is using an Emotiv Epoc x headset to measure EEG waves emitted by the brain. By looking at the brainwaves of a subject in the midst of completing tasks that require some concentration and which are new activities for a subject, we hope to identify an indicator of the onset of stress. These are games and different mental tasks found on the Emotiv BCI (brain computer interface) software. The games involve identifying patterns, moving a block by thinking, and controlling a virtual face by using your own mental commands. This information will help us detect a baseline for stress and then further identify trigger points for stress. Knowing these stressors, we may be able to eliminate the cause of stress before the onset of stressful reactions that happen in a learning environment.
We will also be looking for signs of eustress and distress and what the impacts of different types of stress are. Specifically looking at factors such as engagement, focus, and performance and how those factors are influenced by stress levels. We will be able to analyze and understand the way students respond to stress, the impact of stress on learning, and will inform our search for a signal that would indicate the onset of stress.
We have been able to get the emotiv epoc x headset consistently working and are currently working on setting up our own experiment that will connect to a program that is compatible with emotiv. The data collected from this experiment will help us inform students about stress management, which may have benefits for improving experiences and outcomes within a high school learning environment.
October 10, 2017
Update – We have set up the headset on a few people and have set up the Emotiv account. We have moved a digital box with EEG brainwaves by completing the following: we dowloaded the software, set up ‘push’ ‘pull’ and ‘neutral’ for the motion of the box (and later ‘lift’) with each one being linked to a different emotion (ex. neutral was a feeling of relaxation and pull was a feeling of anxiety/stress), and moved the box all around the screen. Our next step is to build a small play car and connect it to the headet, so we can use the same technique as above to make the car move.
October 5, 2017
The Emotiv software has been set up as well as a few games to play with the EEG headset on Elphaba computer. It can be found on the hard drive in Program Files (x86) in any folder named ‘Emotiv’
9-18-17
The Emotiv 3D Brain Activity Map software was installed today on the dumbledore network on the ‘Elphaba’ computer for future usage, this was done because the Elphaba is portable so we would be able to use the software in different places, giving us more mobility when working on projects. a video of the program being used can be watched here.
September 11, 2017
Today I tested the Emotiv headset on Eli L. Our goal was to see how the app works when connected to the headset and how to set it up. The content quality wasn’t great since we didn’t have a lot of solution to put onto the sensors, so today we will be getting more, so next time we can test it more efficiently. Our purpose of this lab is to figure out how we can use our Emotiv headset to monitor brainwaves during various experiments and learn more about the brain.
Joe’s Lesson:
Joe talked to us today, and showed us that brainwaves are just electro magnetic waves. When the electrons in the brain are stimulated, they move around more. The speed in which they move produces a specific wave that is then recorded in a sensor that we can see the speed of the electrons. The speed tells us the different types of brainwaves. (continued later)
9/5/17
A group of people have discussed studying brainwaves as a new project! We are coming up with a mission statement currently. We are open to anyone else who would like to join our group and who is interested in physiology and studying brainwaves. So far, we have been studying the different brainwaves, how the brain uses them and what they mean.
https://www.brainworksneurotherapy.com/what-are-brainwaves