Non-invasive BCI for Cognitive Enhancement

The University of Texas System (UT)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Healthy Subjects; Neuropsychiatric Disorders

Treatments: Device: EEG-based perceptual training; Device: Behavior based perceptual training

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05311878

2020030073_p2

Details and patient eligibility

About

People's perceptual skills can significantly affect their abilities to make optimal decisions, judgments, and actions in real-world dynamic environments. Perceptual learning refers to training and experiences to induce improvements in the ability to make sense of what people see, hear, feel, taste or smell based on ambiguous sensory information. In this study, investigators hypothesise that there exist neural signatures that robustly encode the conscious visual perception of rotations of a cursor and the magnitudes of these rotations in a novel, rotation-based perceptual learning task. Investigators also hypothesise that online, instantaneous EEG-based feedback on subjects' visual perceptions of rotations with an EEG-based Brain Computer Interface (BCI) can foster perceptual learning much more effectively than behaviour perceptual training, especially in very small rotation magnitudes that represent extremely difficult perceptual tasks.

Enrollment: 32 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 80 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Able-bodied volunteers:

• good general health
• normal or corrected vision
• no history of neurological/psychiatric disease
• ability to read and understand English
• ability to understand information and ability to give a free and informed consent

Subjects with neuropsychiatric diseases

• Subjects with neuropsychiatric diseases such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
• normal or corrected vision
• ability to read and understand English
• ability to understand information and ability to give a free and informed consent

Exclusion criteria

• short attentional spans or cognitive deficits that prevent to remain concentrated during the experimental sessions
• concomitant serious illnesses (e.g., metabolic disorders, cardiac arrest)
• factors hindering proper EEG acquisition (e.g., scalp wound, uncontrolled muscle activity)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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32 participants in 2 patient groups

EEG based perceptual training

Experimental group

Description:

Subjects complete a perceptual learning task in which EEG-based visual feedback is provided

Treatment:

Device: EEG-based perceptual training

Behavior based perceptual training

Active Comparator group

Description:

Subjects complete a perceptual learning task in which ground truth visual feedback is provided

Treatment:

Device: Behavior based perceptual training