Gridlab PhD student Courtnie Paschall will be presenting our latest work in the virtual-reality BCI space at the upcoming IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference in Glasgow July 11th-15th! Come see her oral presentation on July 14th 8:45-9:00, Paper ThAT12.2.

C. Paschall, R. Rao, J. Hauptman, J. Ojemann, J. Herron, “An Immersive Virtual Reality Platform Integrating Human ECOG & sEEG: Implementation & Noise Analysis.” accepted to the 44th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC ’22), Glasgow, UK, July 2022.
Abstract: Virtual reality (VR) offers a robust platform for human behavioral neuroscience, granting unprecedented experimental control over every aspect of an immersive and interactive visual environment. VR experiments have already integrated non-invasive neural recording modalities such as EEG and functional MRI to explore the neural correlates of human behavior and cognition. Integration with implanted electrodes would enable significant increase in spatial and temporal resolution of recorded neural signals and the option of direct brain stimulation for neurofeedback. In this paper, we discuss the first such implementation of a VR platform with implanted electrocorticography (ECoG) and stereo-electroencephalography (sEEG) electrodes in human, in-patient subjects. Noise analyses were performed to evaluate the effect of the VR headset on neural data collected in two VR-naïve subjects, one child and one adult, including both ECOG and sEEG electrodes. Results demonstrate an increase in line noise power (57-63Hz) while wearing the VR headset that is mitigated effectively by common average referencing (CAR), and no significant change in the noise floor bandpower (125-240Hz). To our knowledge, this study represents first demonstrations of VR immersion during invasive neural recording with in-patient human subjects.