Welcome to our lab takeover.
This is the digital cognitive neuroscience lab.
I'm Professor Rob Reinhart in the department of psychological and
brain sciences.
And let me show you a brief tour of our lab.
Welcome, this is our primary laboratory space.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> So
this is where we study the human brain mechanisms,
so visual cognition like attention, learning, and memory.
Here the electrode caps that we use embedded with
electrodes to measure electrical brain activity, non-invasive.
And a camera to identify the 3D coordinates of electrodes in space.
What the booth looks like inside where participants play essentially our video
games where we record their brain activity and deliver electrical brain stimulation.
An EG rig.
This is Vignesh.
Hi Vignesh.
This is our other radio frequency shielded booth where our
participants perform experiments.
This one is also equipped with an eye tracker for
our tracking behavioral experiments.
>> Hey, I'm Renata,
I'm a first year PhD student
here in Reinhart Lab.
Currently, I'm working on individual working memory and
it's arrhythmic structure, and also a little bit on attention.
Our lab is awesome, so please come and join us.
>> Hi, my name is Vighnesh.
I'm the line manager here for the Reinhart Lab.
Some of the projects that I'm currently working on involve visual working memory,
spatial working memory.
>> Jena, you wanna get interviewed?
>> I'm good, thanks.
>> [LAUGH] >> I'm so [SOUND],
stop it >> Hi, I'm Olivia.
I'm a research tech at the Reinhardt lab.
I'm currently working on a project involving visual working memory.
>> My name is Waijia Zhang and currently working in the lab as a volunteer.
And my project is about how your attention prioritize
information in your working memory.
And the lab is awesome, good bye.
>> Hi there, Professor Rob Reinhart here.
I just wanted to give you a brief flavor for
some of the latest research happening in our lab.
So some of the newest research is showing that we can bidirectionally both
increase and decrease activity in the prefrontal cortex.
This poster is showing that we can introduce
extremely weak electrical currents into the brain safely, non-invasively.
And up regulate and down regulate prefrontal cortex activity,
evolutionary most advanced part of your brain that's
involved in decision making and control and reasoning.
And correspondingly, up and
down change learning performance as you acquire new skills on a task.
So here with this activity that's actually a measure of functional connectivity,
how your brain is functionally wired up.
We can, again, both boost that and impair that by changing the direction of
the electrical stimulation that we're pushing and pulling to the brain.
>> I'm Amanat Bansal, I'm a senior honors thesis student at the Reinhart Lab.
What I'm studying is how different forms of memory in our brain
guide our attention to analyze complex stimuli in our environment.
>> Let me show you something cool over here.
This is an electrical brain of someone learning over time.
You see some visual activity in the back of the head, moving to the front area as
they're processing it, and then going to motor cortex as they're making a response.
>> Hi Shrey.
>> My name is Shrey.
I'm a third year graduate student in the lab, and I'm examining how different
communicate with each other when you need to hold something in your mind.
>> Hi guys, my name is Luke Poole.
I'm a master's student in the Department of Psychological and
Brain Sciences here at BU.
Here in the Reinhart Lab, I'm a research volunteer interested in cognitive control.
Fresh data from one of our experiments here in the Reinhart Lab.
This involves cognitive control, think about impulsivity, emotion regulation.
This type of activity, this red blob here is a manifestation of a low oscillatory
frequency that likely originates from the anterior cingulate cortex.
This has big implications for how we inform non-invasive brain stimulation
protocols and also for treating those with cognitive deficiencies or
deficiencies in emotion regulation, impulsivity.
>> I am Zeng Tan, I'm a senior honors thesis at the Reinhart Lab.
I'm currently running an experiment on a right now.
Something really dense, that means he's either moving his feet or
shrugging his shoulders, and I would tell him not to do that.
Yeah. [LAUGH] Basically I'm looking at his
EEG data, also looking at how he's doing the trials, if he's making concurrent
mistakes or he's making a lot of mistakes past experiment, talk to him about it.
And also I'm trying to see if there are any sort of artifacts or
any big movements cuz [INAUDIBLE] >> We're trying to just
get a sense of where the electrodes are placed here on the head.
Although it might look like laser tag.
>> So my name is Chris Gill.
I'm a first year PhD student in the Brain Behavior and Cognition Program.
I'm currently working on a project
that's looking at the electrocortical dynamics of learning.
>> Go.
>> Hi, my name is Julia Schwarts.
I'm a senior in biomedical engineering.
What I'm currently doing with this study is studying the effects of
attention in the brain when somebody is focusing their attention or
distributing their attention across many different items.
>> So they're having me put my chin in here and look at a screen, and
try to see in my peripheral vision if any of these stimuli are moving around or not.
>> Hey guys, it was great having you.
We're very excited to show you our lab.
>> Yeah, and if any of you watching are interested in participating in any of our
research studies or would like to know more about what we do
in the lab, you can get in touch with us at cogneuro@bu.edu,
that's C-O-G-N-E-U-R-O@bu.edu.
Or you can call us on six one seven, three five eight, eight one one zero.
Thanks so much.