• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Spanish
sb-logo-with-brain
  • Resources
    • Monthly eNewsletter
    • Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle
    • The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness
    • How to evaluate brain training claims
    • Resources at a Glance
  • Brain Teasers
    • Top 25 Brain Teasers & Games for Teens and Adults
    • Brain Teasers for each Cognitive Ability
    • More Mind Teasers & Games for Adults of any Age
  • Virtual Summits
    • 2019 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • Speaker Roster
    • Brainnovations Pitch Contest
    • 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2015 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2014 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
  • Report: Pervasive Neurotechnology
  • Report: Digital Brain Health
  • About
    • Mission & Team
    • Endorsements
    • Public Speaking
    • In the News
    • Contact Us

U.S. Army develops novel way to analyze brain imaging data and shape emerging non-invasive neurotechnology

February 5, 2020 by SharpBrains

Aggre­gate dis­tri­b­u­tion of cor­ti­cal brain-wave activ­i­ty, orga­nized by stan­dard fre­quen­cy bands, across a range of depths. Cred­it: U.S. Army

Army devel­ops big data approach to neu­ro­science (press release):

“A big data approach to neu­ro­science promis­es to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve our under­stand­ing of the rela­tion­ship between brain activ­i­ty and performance.

To date, there have been rel­a­tive­ly few attempts to use a big-data approach with­in the emerg­ing field of neu­rotech­nol­o­gy. In this field, the few attempts at meta-analy­sis (analy­sis across mul­ti­ple stud­ies) com­bine only the results from indi­vid­ual stud­ies rather than the raw data. A new study is one of the first to com­bine data across a diverse set of exper­i­ments to iden­ti­fy pat­terns of brain activ­i­ty that are com­mon across tasks and people.

The Army in par­tic­u­lar is inter­est­ed in how the cog­ni­tive state of Sol­diers can affect their per­for­mance dur­ing a mis­sion. If you can under­stand the brain, you can pre­dict and even enhance cog­ni­tive performance.

Researchers from the U.S. Army Com­bat Capa­bil­i­ties Devel­op­ment Com­mand’s Army Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry teamed with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at San Anto­nio and Intheon Labs to devel­op a first-of-its-kind mega-analy­sis of brain imag­ing data–in this case elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy, or EEG.

In the two-part paper, they aggre­gate the raw data from 17 indi­vid­ual stud­ies, col­lect­ed at six dif­fer­ent loca­tions, into a sin­gle ana­lyt­i­cal frame­work, with their find­ings pub­lished in a series of two papers in the jour­nal Neu­roIm­age. The indi­vid­ual stud­ies includ­ed in this analy­sis encom­pass a diverse set of tasks such sim­u­lat­ed dri­ving and visu­al search.”

The Study:

Auto­mat­ed EEG mega-analy­sis I: Spec­tral and ampli­tude char­ac­ter­is­tics across stud­ies (Neu­roIm­age)

  • From the abstract: Sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments have been made in the fMRI field by pool­ing sta­tis­ti­cal results from mul­ti­ple stud­ies (meta-analy­sis). More recent­ly, fMRI stan­dard­iza­tion efforts have focused on enabling the joint analy­sis of raw fMRI data across stud­ies (mega-analy­sis), with the hope of achiev­ing more detailed insights. How­ev­er, it has not been clear if such analy­ses in the EEG field are pos­si­ble or equal­ly fruit­ful. Here we present the results of a large-scale EEG mega-analy­sis using 18 stud­ies from six sites rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al dif­fer­ent exper­i­men­tal par­a­digms. We demon­strate that when meta-data are con­sis­tent across stud­ies, both chan­nel-lev­el and source-lev­el EEG mega-analy­sis are pos­si­ble and can pro­vide insights unavail­able in sin­gle studies…In a com­pan­ion paper, we apply mega-analy­sis to assess com­mon­al­i­ties in event-relat­ed EEG fea­tures across stud­ies. The con­tin­u­ous raw and pre­processed data used in this analy­sis are avail­able through the Dat­a­Cat­a­log at https://cancta.net.

Auto­mat­ed EEG mega-analy­sis II: Cog­ni­tive aspects of event relat­ed fea­tures (Neu­roIm­age)

  • From the abstract: We present the results of a large-scale analy­sis of event-relat­ed respons­es based on raw EEG data from 17 stud­ies per­formed at six exper­i­men­tal sites asso­ci­at­ed with four dif­fer­ent insti­tu­tions. The analy­sis cor­pus rep­re­sents 1,155 record­ings con­tain­ing approx­i­mate­ly 7.8 mil­lion event instances acquired under sev­er­al dif­fer­ent exper­i­men­tal par­a­digms. Such large-scale analy­sis is pred­i­cat­ed on con­sis­tent data orga­ni­za­tion and event anno­ta­tion as well as an effec­tive auto­mat­ed pre­pro­cess­ing pipeline to trans­form raw EEG into a form suit­able for com­par­a­tive analysis…This work demon­strates that EEG mega-analy­sis (pool­ing of raw data across stud­ies) can enable inves­ti­ga­tions of brain dynam­ics in a more gen­er­al­ized fash­ion than sin­gle stud­ies afford. A com­pan­ion paper com­ple­ments this event-based analy­sis by address­ing com­mon­al­i­ty of the time and fre­quen­cy sta­tis­ti­cal prop­er­ties of EEG across stud­ies at the chan­nel and dipole level.

News in Context:

  • Six DARPA-fund­ed research teams aim at rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing non­in­va­sive brain-machine interfaces
  • Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy can improve our lives…if we first address these Pri­va­cy and Informed Con­sent issues
  • Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright
  • 10 non­in­va­sive neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment and brain health

How to address pri­va­cy, eth­i­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry issues: Exam­ples in cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, depres­sion and ADHD from Sharp­Brains

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Peak Performance, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: big data, brain imaging data, brain-activity, brain-performance, cognitive, cognitive state, cognitive-performance, EEG, NeuroImage, neuroscience, Neurotechnology, non-invasive neurotechnology, U.S. Army

Primary Sidebar

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

  1. Can you grow your hippocampus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters
  2. How learning changes your brain
  3. To harness neuroplasticity, start with enthusiasm
  4. Three ways to protect your mental health during –and after– COVID-19
  5. Why you turn down the radio when you're lost
  6. Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle Is the Key to Self-Empowered Aging
  7. Ten neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment & health
  8. Five reasons the future of brain enhancement is digital, pervasive and (hopefully) bright
  9. What Educators and Parents Should Know About Neuroplasticity and Dance
  10. The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains
  11. Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress
  12. Can brain training work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
  13. What are cognitive abilities and how to boost them?
  14. Eight Tips To Remember What You Read
  15. Twenty Must-Know Facts to Harness Neuroplasticity and Improve Brain Health

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

  1. You think you know the colors? Try the Stroop Test
  2. Check out this brief attention experiment
  3. Test your stress level
  4. Guess: Are there more brain connections or leaves in the Amazon?
  5. Quick brain teasers to flex two key men­tal mus­cles
  6. Count the Fs in this sentence
  7. Can you iden­tify Apple’s logo?
  8. Ten classic optical illu­sions to trick your mind
  9. What do you see?
  10. Fun Mental Rotation challenge
  • Check our Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions

Join 12,619 readers exploring, at no cost, the latest in neuroplasticity and brain health.

By subscribing you agree to receive our free, monthly eNewsletter. We don't rent or sell emails collected, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

IMPORTANT: Please check your inbox or spam folder in a couple minutes and confirm your subscription.

Get In Touch!

Contact Us

660 4th Street, Suite 205,
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA

About Us

SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science. We prepare general and tailored market reports, publish consumer guides, produce an annual global and virtual conference, and provide strategic advisory services.

© 2022 SharpBrains. All Rights Reserved - Privacy Policy