This project updates and enhances equipment supporting the psychophysiology program at Rollins College. A recently modified curriculum and a new state-of-the-art facility, were severely threatened by increasingly unreliable, outdated, or dead equipment systems. Most effected were electrophysiological recording and analysis systems. This project acquires and applies a single and highly integrated Computer Aided Sleep Analysis and Mass Data Storage System for data acquisition/analysis. The system allows for integrated on-line amplification, A/D conversion, digital frequency filtering, and optical disc storage of up to 24 simultaneous channels of various data types (e.g., EEG, EKG, EMG, EOG, etc.). On-line analyses and computerized color graphics are also available. The system is broadly applicable, including sleep experiments and evaluation of such comparative cognitive tasks as mental arithmetic. Proposed instrumentation improves the curriculum: (1) by increasing students' hands-on laboratory experiences with psychophysiological principles and preparations, recording procedures, issues involving methodology, and analysis techniques; (2) by allowing a larger number of students to be involved due to advanced automation and data-processing efficiency; (3) by offering physiological laboratories in a wider variety of lower-division courses; and (4) by eliminating restrictive upper-division enrollment limits imposed by lack of adequate laboratory equipment. The institution is matching the NSF grant with an equal amount of funds.
