The purpose of this project is to continue supporting a highly successful ten-day intensive summer training workshop focusing on EEG and ERP methods. These methods are widely used to measure the time course of brain activity across a range of basic science and clinical science domains. The workshop is intended for beginning and intermediate EEG/ERP researchers, and it will provide them with training in the essential aspects of EEG/ERP methodology, giving them a solid foundation for conducting innovative research on typical and disordered functioning of the mind and brain. The project directors are well-established researchers with experience addressing both basic science and clinical science questions with EEG and ERPs. The workshops will alternate between Davis and San Diego, which contain large and vibrant communities of EEG/ERP researchers. In addition to the project directors, 21 well-established EEG/ERP researchers from the Davis and San Diego regions and 2 visiting EEG/ERP experts will serve as the faculty for the yearly workshops. The workshop participants will come from a variety of disciplines, including cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, clinical psychology, experimental psychopathology, neurology, psychiatry, developmental psychology, and gerontology. This multi-disciplinary group of participants reflects the broad use of EEG/ERPs across the many domains that focus on neural and mental functioning. The participants will also represent a variety of career stages, including graduate and medical students, postdocs, residents, and junior faculty. The workshop will involve a combination of lectures, data analysis activities, discussions, and breakout sessions. An integrated set of lectures on the fundamentals of EEG/ERP methodology will be given by the project directors. These lectures will accompanied by hands-on data analysis activities. Lectures on special topics, including advanced techniques and applications to clinical populations, will be given by the other faculty. Several small-group discussions and breakout sessions will also be included, led by the workshop faculty, that will focus on advanced methods and on critical evaluation of published research. Significant outreach and dissemination efforts will spread the educational benefits of this workshop to a broader group of researchers. These efforts are based on a web site, http://erpinfo.org, which provides lecture notes, information about methods, data analysis software, and sample datasets to the worldwide research community. We will also use social media to disseminate information about EEG/ERP methodology to a broad audience of researchers. Thus, the impact of this project will go far beyond the workshop participants. The ultimate goal of this project is to increase the quality and quantity of future EEG/ERP research so that this valuable technique can have a greater impact on scientific progress in the many basic science and clinical disciplines that focus on the human mind and brain.
Disorders of mind and brain are prevalent, can be personally devastating, and lead to a substantial economic burden. The electroencephalogram (EEG) and event-related potential (ERP) techniques provide powerful methods for understanding these disorders, beginning with basic science research on typical brain function and ending with biomarkers that are used in discovering and testing new treatments. The proposed workshop seeks to enhance the ability of basic and clinical scientists to use these powerful techniques, thereby increasing the rate of scientific discovery and treatment development.
| Luck, Steven J; Gaspelin, Nicholas (2017) How to get statistically significant effects in any ERP experiment (and why you shouldn't). Psychophysiology 54:146-157 |
| Bharani, Krishna L; Paller, Ken A; Reber, Paul J et al. (2016) Compensatory processing during rule-based category learning in older adults. Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn 23:304-26 |
| Tanner, Darren; Morgan-Short, Kara; Luck, Steven J (2015) How inappropriate high-pass filters can produce artifactual effects and incorrect conclusions in ERP studies of language and cognition. Psychophysiology 52:997-1009 |
| Brooker, Rebecca J; Buss, Kristin A (2014) Toddler fearfulness is linked to individual differences in error-related negativity during preschool. Dev Neuropsychol 39:1-8 |
