Intelligent System Engineering and Novel Simulation Environments Group

The goal of cognitive neuroscience is to understand how complex functions such as perception, attention, memory, and language are implemented within the brain. The rapid development of cognitive neurosciences in the last two decades is mainly due to the technological advancement of non-invasive brain imaging techniques which can allow the study of brain activity related to the performance of specific tasks in awake healthy human subjects.

- Event-Related Potentials
We measure the electrical activity of the brain synchronized to the onset of specific events in experimental tasks (Event-Related Potentials). This activity can give information about the time that certain events take place as well as their intensity, as measured with the EEG. Using source localization, sources of cortical activity can be localized. Moreover, we apply time-frequency analysis to investigate brain activity in different frequency bands (alpha, beta, and gamma range) and its modulation according to specific events. We use a 64-channel EEG system from BioSemi.

- Eye Movements

Bringing a target to the center of our retina offers higher resolution and for this reason we perform thousands of saccades every day. We also perform vergence eye movements in order to focus on objects at different depths, at near (convergence) or far (divergence).
Measuring the latency and accuracy of eye movements in 3D space, can provide valuable information about the processes underlying the decision to make a motor response to a visual target. Substantial knowledge about the cortical and subcortical network underlying saccade generation and control comes from neurophysiological, brain imaging, and lesion studies. It is important to emphasize that the saccadic system can constitute a relatively simple model of a motor system uniquely coupled to the visual system, to understand complex higher functions such as attention, intention, and spatial memory.