Brain-imaging in an immersive motion simulator

Overview

The use of virtual environment simulators for training in complex and potentially dangerous situations (e.g. flight and driver training, medical procedures) is a growing and critically important area of research. Technological advances are making simulators more affordable, but there are critical questions unanswered about how people respond and learn in such environments, and how such environments should be designed to enhance the learning experience.

At McMaster university we designed and custom build our own full motion simulator for driving and flying, in which we can present accurately timed stimuli (visual, motion, audio, force feedback) to test subjects and measure (EEG, eye-tracking, control response times) their responses.

The challenges are many fold, we had to build such a complex system, we had to be able to collect actuate data, design meaningful experiments, and then analyze the results/data of our experiments with human test subjects.

Dr. Judith Shedden
Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour
Dr. Martin v. Mohrenschildt
Computing and Software, Faculty of Engineering