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The Fellows Summer Experience: Tigers Game and July Fourth Parade

2018-Jul-09 Filed under: Fellowship,Lifestyle Comments Off

One of the most attractive things about a BYB Summer Fellowship is the chance to spend a summer in colorful Ann Arbor. We changed the program name from an internship to a fellowship because of the lasting connections made throughout the summer, and these connections are made possible by the things we all do together! Before we get to some project updates, here’s a little bit about our summer together so far.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Last summer, we sponsored a student whose visa required participation in a “cultural appreciation” event, so we piled into a bus and headed over to Comerica Park for some of America’s favorite sport, baseball. It was such a hit, we went again this year! Luckily, Backyard Brains signature color  (orange!) matches pretty well with the Tigers brand 😉

Fourth of July Parade

Another celebrated BYB Summer Fellowship pastime is the Jaycee’s Fourth of July Parade! Each year, the fellows design and build a costume representing their summer research and wear it as BYB walks in the annual parade! Check out some of the looks from this year:

 
 
 
   

Meet the Fellows, See the Projects

Catch up with our Fellows! Since our Fellowship started, each fellow has been hard at work on their summer research. Check out these posts introducing each Fellowship research track:

First Progress Reports:

If you’ve been dying for an update on what we’ve been researching, fret no more! Feast your eyes on our first batch of updates!

Second Progress Reports:

Science marches ever onward! The Fellows have kept plugging away on their research in between all the fun and games, and here are their newest updates!

Conclusions:

The summer is winding down, and with it our Fellowship. While scientific exploration is never really finished, here are some wrap-ups from our Fellows on the projects they have devoted their inquiry to over the past weeks.

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In Search of the Mu Rhythm

2018-Jul-03 Filed under: Fellowship Comments Off

Hello! We are inching towards our goal of giving you a superpower! Last time, I was trying to find the mu rhythms, and I strongly think I may have found them. This consisted of two main steps. One was to find the right montage (electrode locations) which will help us see the mu rhythms. And once I figured the locations, the next step was to hunt for those distinct mu rhythms. For this I needed, a suitable data recording protocol. Both of which I didn’t seem to settle upon quickly. After multiple unsuccessful tests on my mentor who also agreed to be my subject, there was a tiny ray of hope.

I decided upon using 4 channels corresponding to 4 locations on the scalp.

Here’s an image of the international 10/20 system used to specify the electrode locations.

One of them is keeping the positive lead on F4 and negative(reference) on C4 with the ground lead on the mastoid (the bone behind the ear), or the positive lead on C4 and negative(reference) on Fz. And ofcourse, to maintain symmetry, there are two channels on F3/C3 and C3/Fz. As we know, the left hemisphere of the brain corresponds to the right part of our body and vice versa.

And now, time for some data blitz! Hello, mu rhythms!

The waves after the breakpoint correspond to when there was movement. There is a stark difference between the nature of waves before and after movement. There is a desynchronisation of the EEG waves right when a movement is happening. This is nothing but the mu-wave suppression which I mentioned in my last post.

However, just a visual observation of these mu waves is not enough. To accomplish our end goal, we need better visualisation; a way to quantify this suppression. And that’s what I am working on presently. One way to do this would be to calculate the power corresponding to each frequency and plot it. Theoretically, there should be a reduction of power in the 8-14 Hz band every time there is a movement. Or every time there is an imagined movement. The power plots gave me promising leads. Here’s a snippet of the power spectral density.

This is a plot with the data collected from F4-C4, the location that corresponds to left hand. As we can see, the waves for relaxed state, and right hand movement (both imagined and actual movement) have equivalent power. However for the left hand movement there is a significant decrease in power. And a slightly less reduction in power for imagined left hand movement. This corresponds with our expectations.

Currently, I am in search of more features and processing techniques that I can use in order to train a model to predict imagined movements. Simultaneously, collecting as much as data as possible. One can never have too much data!

Apart from work, my last two weekends were quite interesting. One of them I hosted my sister’s classical indian dance show and the other weekend I visited the picturesque Michigan’s Little Bavaria: Frankenmuth!

The shockingly unpredictable World Cup has kept me occupied too!  

I look forward to updating all of you with hopefully some more good results! But until then, Auf Wiedersehen!

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Tech Trek and Fellow Updates

2018-Jun-22 Filed under: Fellowship,Outreach Comments Off

Fresh, organic, locally sourced meditation researchLast Friday, Backyard Brains once again opened our doors (even wider–they’re always open during business hours!) to our fellow and aspiring citizen scientists as a part of this year’s Ann Arbor Tech Trek!  Dozens of local tech companies had their doors open to the public that evening and we, like our friends around town, had people streaming in from open to close! BYB has participated for the last few years, and it is always a hit.

For four hours on Friday afternoon, we were packed with people from all walks of life who were interested in learning about Backyard Brains and neuroscience! It was a day of education, outreach, and new connections. In the office, we demonstrated our classic, the Human to Human Interface, as well as The Claw, and we even helped people control Mario with their eye blinks!

Our Summer Fellows also got in on the action, presenting their work down in the Makerspace at All Hands Active. This was the first chance our fellows got to share their science with the community, letting people in on their secrets and experiment rigs. For example, Silkmoth Fellow Jess was running experiments on a cockroach antenna during Tech Trek: Some kids were watching when she used different odors to try to get a reaction in the antenna, as pictured below:

It was definitely a unique opportunity, full of its own trials. According to Mantis Shrimp Fellow Dan, “I was trying to collect behavioral data with the mantis shrimp while his implants were falling out, and people would come by who obligingly ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the prep and politely listened to my spiel about EMGs and the strike. I’ve never presented about my research while actively conducting it.”

Meet the Fellows, See the Projects

Catch up with our Fellows! Since our Fellowship started, each fellow has been hard at work on their summer research. Saw a cool project and you want to know more? Check out these posts introducing each Fellowship research track:

First Progress Reports:

If you’ve been dying for an update on what we’ve been researching, fret no more! Feast your eyes on our first batch of updates!

Second Progress Reports:

Science marches ever onward! The Fellows have kept plugging away on their research in between all the fun and games, and here are their newest updates!

Conclusions:

The summer is winding down, and with it our Fellowship. While scientific exploration is never really finished, here are some wrap-ups from our Fellows on the projects they have devoted their inquiry to over the past weeks.

Tags:
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