Research

Behavioural Experiments:

1.Stimulus Presentation:

1.1 E-Prime

I am using E-Prime software for conducting behavioural experiments. E-Prime provides a truly easy-to-use environment for computerized experiment design, data collection, and analysis. E-Prime provides millisecond precision timing to ensure the accuracy of your data.

1.2 Psychtoolbox

Psychtoolbox is a free set of Matlab and GNU/Octave functions for vision research. It makes it easy to synthesize and show accurately controlled visual and auditory stimuli and interact with the observer. It runs with Matlab and Octave on Mac OSX, Linux and Windows.

2. Eye-tracking:

I used Tobii Eye-tracking system for two experiments (Unpublished). Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movement. Eye trackers are used in research on the visual system, in psychology, in cognitive linguistics and in product design.

(Picture source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/eye-tracking-studies/)

Neuroimaging Experiments

3. EEG/ERP

Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of electric signals generated by the parallelly- oriented pyramidal cells perpendicular to the surface of the scalp in the brain. It’s a graphical display of a difference in voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain.

Event Related Potentials (ERP) are the potential changes in the EEG that are time locked to sensory or cognitive events to examine the brain's response to critical stimuli (e.g. words or sentences).

(Picture Source: Rugg, M. D., & Coles, M. G. (1995). The ERP and cognitive psychology: Conceptual issues. In Rugg, M. D., & Coles, M. G. (1995). Electrophysiology of mind: Event-related brain potentials and cognition. Oxford University Press.)

At IIT Ropar, in the Language and Cognition lab we have two EEG systems of EGI.Inc. These are of (i) 128- Hydrocel GSN-Channels and (ii) 32-Hydrocel GSN-Channels. 32-Channels system is a portable system.

4. fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging)

At IIT Delhi in the Summer School Program in Neuroscience organized by MIT, Harvard and IIT Delhi in June 2013,

I learnt basics of fMRI and also got hands-on training for deriving and analyzing fMRI data obtained in various aspects of cognition. Functional MRI (fMRI) measures signal changes in the brain that are due to changing neural activity and is also referred to as BOLD imaging (Blood oxygen level dependent). A person's brain is scanned while s/he is performing a certain task such as reading a sentence or looking at a particular type of picture. When the neural activity is increased, there is increase in oxygen demand and the vascular system actually overcompensates for this, increasing the amount of oxygenated hemoglobin relative to deoxygenated hemoglobin.

Such techniques are being used in pre-surgical planning and in basic neuroscience research in areas such as memory, expressive and receptive speech, visual spatial processing and other cognitive processes.